Our friends at SeeClickFix have some cool news to share today: The do-it-yourself civic platform is going multilingual. Citizens will soon be able to report non-emergency issues in their community to those accountable for the public space in 83 languages anywhere in the world using SeeClickFix on their PC or mobile phone. (And just in time for PdF Europe!)

Yesterday, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced his "Connected City" initiative, rolling out a series of programs aimed at transforming how New Yorkers interact with and get services from city government. Building on his administration’s valuable 311 program, he promised to make government more accessible by translating city websites into six languages, distributing more information via Twitter (follow @311nyc) and social networking sites, enabling users to fine-tune their usage of NYC.gov around their personal information needs, and creating a free iPhone application allowing people to submit quality-of-life complaints to 311 directly from their phone.

The Obama Administration took its first major steps toward implementing its promise to make government more open and transparent, with two presidential memoranda covering freedom of information, transparency and open government. The first memo directing all agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure." This is a 180-degree turn from the policies of the Bush Administration. Most interesting for e-democracy fans: The memo says "all agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government."

The second memo reiterates those points, and adds more detail. It calls for information about government operations and decisions to be put online, and urges departments and agencies to get public feedback on the information of the greatest interest to the public. Even more promising, in an explicit tip-of-the-hat to "web 2.0," the memo states...

Are you a local elected official looking for advice from your peers on how to make better use of web technologies to relate to your constituents? Or perhaps you're a government IT specialist looking for support in your battles with footdragging higher-ups? Maybe you're looking for perspective from within the system on how government entities are implementing web 2.0 strategies? Or perhaps you are a not-so-tech-obsessed public-minded public servant who is simply looking for mutual support, across the often silo-ed and stultified world of government work?

You can find all of those things and more at GovLoop.com, an eight-month old social network created by Steve Ressler, a twenty-something federal employee living in Tampa, Flordia. Built on the free Ning.com platform, GovLoop has about 4,000 members at present, and is growing, Ressler says, at the rate of about 1,000 a month, almost entirely by word of mouth. The site is getting about 500 to 1,000 unique visitors a day, and about 150 thousand page views a month. Its members come mainly from all over the U.S., working in local, state and federal government jobs, but also include a smattering of good-government public interest types, academics and what Ressler refers to as "government contractors with good intentions." Plus there's an international contingent from English-speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

I had a nice chat with Ressler late Friday afternoon, and he gave me a full rundown on how GovLoop came to be and where he hopes it will go...

I'm in Austin, Texas for the Netroots Nation conference today and tomorrow, and will try to do some live video interviews as I bump into people and post them here. I'm speaking tomorrow on a panel on "Transparency, Participation and Reinvention in Government in the Next Administration Through Web 2.0 Tools and Culture," which I think could have had the shorter title of "Rebooting Government in 2009" but you get the drift.

Our cousins across the pond continue to show that "government 2.0" isn't just something that we have to do "to" government, but it's something government can do "with" us. The Power of Information Task Force has just launched a contest called "Show Us a Better Way" that is calling for "ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated." They've put up 20,000 pounds for the winning idea, which is something like a gazillion dollars (these days). This is really kewl.

Time for some editorial housekeeping. In our never-ending quest to cover how technology is changing politics and serve the growing community of activists, technologists, journalists, politicians, government workers, bloggers and plain old citizens who are engaged in making this change happen, we are pleased to announce two new additions to our editorial crew. Dave Witzel and Allison Fine are coming on board Personal Democracy Forum as senior editors who will help expand our coverage on PersonalDemocracy.com of how mass, networked participation in the public arena is affecting all the important arenas outside of electoral campaigns (which we cover obsessively at techPresident).