If you haven't heard, the US Federal Trade Commission has recently set up a national Do Not Call registry. Registering with the DNC list will stop as much as 80% of telemarketing calls to your home. Telemarketers get the list from the FTC, and if they are found to be calling numbers on the list, they are subject to fines. Great idea, and something that has existed in various forms (especially at the state level) for several years.

This registry, which took me less than a minute to file (and only another couple seconds to respond to the email they send me), is part of the low level functionality that is essential to the success of eGovernment as a whole. This is the kind of thing that can spark public interest in the use of the internet to simplify their interactions with government. Sort of like a gateway drug for eGov. I don't know the exact numbers, but I've heard the site was swamped during its first several days, so it looks like the marketing was successful. Hopefully that translates into continued and varied usage by those hitting the DNC site during the first several days.