Want to friend the feds?

The U.S. General Services Administration last week launched a government-wide YouTube channel to provide one central location for citizens to view video clips created by 25 federal agencies. The U.S. Government Channel -- which was viewed 82,000 times in its first week -- is the latest effort by the feds to embrace social media.

Martha Dorris, acting associate administrator for GSA's Office of Citizen Services and Communications, called the YouTube channel a "way for the public to be able to find all of the official U.S. government videos in one place."

Over the last year, GSA has signed legal agreements with Facebook, MySpace and seven other popular Web sites that allow individual agencies to interact directly with hundreds of millions of citizens. Many individual agencies also are engaged with Twitter, sending their news feeds and other official announcements over this real-time communications channel.

"We're taking our information to where the citizens go to get that information and not relying on the citizens coming to government Web sites all the time," Dorris says. "We're doing a lot of viral marketing with our Facebook page, our Twitter accounts as well as our YouTube channel."

Dorris says GSA hopes to sign similar agreements with iTunes and LinkedIn.

"The Obama Administration's objective of creating transparent, open and participatory government -- this technology really lends itself to that, whether we're sharing videos on YouTube and allowing the public to comment on them, or opening up public dialogue on certain issues," Dorris says. "The government needs to be providing services and information the way citizens want it."

Here's a list of the Web sites where you can interact with federal agencies:

1. YouTube

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