Two new websites announcements came out today as the federal government continues to take advantage of the benefits of broadband to improve communications both internally and externally.

The first is a social network for federal employees and contractors by the General Services Administration.  Word first got out on the site, dubbed “FedSpace,” earlier this year.  But today Hillicon Valley’s Guatham Nagesh shared updates on the progress of the site, due to go live in the fall, from an interview with GSA’s Associate Administrator David McClure:

McClure said FedSpace will have features from several networking sites, including Facebook-style profiles, blogs and a wiki so employees can share information. Rather than building the system from scratch, GSA is pulling elements from other federal programs so it can speed the launch. The pilot project will be hosted on the cloud, which McClure hopes will help prove that cloud applications are cheaper and easier to deploy.

The other announcement was the launch of Healthcare.gov, which went live today.  The site is managed by the Department of Health & Human Services and aims to help Americans become more informed about health insurance options.  Washington Post’s Ezra Klein applauded the site today:

…HealthCare.gov is live now, and it’s a slick, easy-to-use site, which may be the best thing out there for seeing both the public and private health-coverage options for people in your situation in your area. And the obvious advantage of starting the site this early is that there’s a lot of time for the tech team to play with it, improve it, and get comfortable with it before 2014, when it really needs to be working.

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