Idea for new Government Agency to help the People

[Indenturedebtor]

I just had an idea after reading this thread about Wii Remotes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3160551

I think that with very little investment we could drastically improve many aspects of our society by creating an office say under the executive that looked for and promoted the use of cheap off the shelf technologies for use by businesses, other offices and agencies of the government, hospitals, etc.

I know I know, the free market does a marvelous job of driving innovation, but oftentimes people are unaware of that innovation. What's more such innovations are often WELL out of the reach of the budgets of schools and rural hospitals etc. How much would it cost to employ a few researchers, some PR people etc to find innovations like the WII whiteboard and then make sure that all school principles etc know about them?

Again in case I wasn't clear I'm not proposing that this new office purchase these technologies directly, simply make sure that people know when they come up!

What do you guys think? Suggestions? Slander? Anyone? :D

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. Obama's actually been pretty ahead on this one.

He has proposed a lot of long needed integration of the government with technology, and I think if there are places where economic efficiency for small biz could be helped by gov, he'd jump on it. My opinion is that it should be integrated deeply. For instance tax incentives for paperless offices and so forth, if that were needed...I think there have always been these sweet spots where efficiency can be increased, but as you say it takes a lot of research for each small business to do.

[Indenturedebtor]

2. Yeah that's the problem

Many things work more efficiently when they're distributed out in the ether, but I think that simply having a "The More You Know" office broken down by divisions such as Education, Green Building, Whatever that actively promoted awareness of greener, cheaper, more efficient practices and products could yield great returns!