We're Not Afraid to Say It: We Love Seattle.gov

We here at Seattlest use the internet a lot, so when a website we visit strikes us as exceptionally useful, we think it deserves some props, even if doing so makes us look a little dorky. We'll warn you in advance, it’s going to be hard to swallow what we're about to say, so brace yourself.

For all its faults, our city's government has a truly great website because it is astoundingly helpful and easy-to-use.

There. We said it.

Contrary to what you might think, Seattle.gov is a lot more than a collection of government propaganda and contact forms for various departments (though that exists). For instance, the other night, we decided to go and check out the community center in our new neighborhood, but we needed the address and wanted to make sure it was still open after dinner. We went straight to seattle.gov knowing full well how to quickly reach the parks page.

But it was the first time we'd been to the city's site for anything other than changing our electric account in a while, so we were pleasantly surprised to find three new ways to start our search without even looking for them.

Because we like to fiddle with new web tools, we eschewed the standard Arts&Rec tab, the link to all city services, and the search box. Instead, we typed in part of our address into the "My Neighborhood Map" feature and were rewarded with a wealth of customizable information about our neighborhood in graphic and text form. It included a list of local, state, and federal elected officials, local crime data, types of recreation facilities, attractions and all sorts of other useful ephemera tailored to our address and our desires. Nice.

Other features include links to Seattle Channel videos, some of which are interesting, podcasts, and more stats than you can shake a stick at.

We are well aware of how dorky it makes us look to sing the praises of the city's website, but it really is useful and we think it deserves to be said. We've spent plenty of time on other government sites at the local, state and federal levels and believe us, Seattle's is by far the easiest to navigate. Plus, you can watch a list of 911 responses in real time, or see where each call is going on the interactive map, which we find morbidly fascinating.