US Government - how to save money

I just sat through a presentation with a number of political speakers. One of the things mentioned was that in 2010 there will be a US Census mailed to every US household. I started thinking, that must be expensive, with 100M households I bet that little exercise will cost $1b. Why not use the internet? Maybe email the census form, nahh - still people without internet at home and too many chances for fraudulent data. I thought some more and here's the idea:

Set up a website such as USA.gov. Have every household/person sign up on this website with their social security number, drivers license and maybe even a 3rd or 4th unique identification. Then use this portal for all communication between the US Government (actually ANY government could use this) and the people. One of the things found on this portal would be the census form. Now, with all the data entered via computers there's no need to scan and decipher the old-fashioned mail-in forms and the results are instant. Not only that, reminders can be set for missing paperwork. Beyond just the census this portal could have a lot of other features:

Any and all Federal paperwork such as....

TAX - do your taxes online (unless we finally can get rid of personal income tax and instead tax consumption)

VOTE - vote online, I bet the voting % would skyrocket - again instant results and no "hanging chads"

EMAIL- give every person in the country an email address @usa.gov

IM/CHAT - live chat with Federal government officials - talk about being productive!

LOCAL - Link to local government for all local services (such as www.myflorida.com)

BLOG: - we the people speak up

TOWN HALL meetings - make them virtual on the portal

MISSING - feature all the missing

WANTED - feature all the wanted

and +++++ - you get the idea.

In an effort to get the economy going we all need to look long and hard on the expenses. It is NOT good news if the jobless numbers are better because the government is hiring (as this means that "we the people" must pay more).

Let's reduce the government and make it much more effective with the technology that ALREADY EXIST!