Not long before Lake Area Middle School was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, Jess Rimington was facilitating a classroom exchange program there; one of the earliest implementations of her then-fledgling organization, One World Youth Project. Jess’s classroom was paired with a classroom in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Over the course of the academic year, the students in her New Orleans classroom and their Mongolian counterparts shared their experiences, stories, and learned the similarities of their lives. They got to know each other.

When the floodwalls were breached, the Gentilly was flooded and with it, Lake Area Middle School. Jess heard nothing from her New Orleanian students. It would be months before she would hear the harrowing stories of students waving down planes from their rooftops or hear about the boy who was forced to break through his ceiling to get free.

As I walk to work, I often have ideas as my mind wanders. (Such as this one.) This is one of those. It was sparks by thinking of the sentencing of Rod Blagojevich, marijuana possessions, and crimes committed by financial institutions during the financial crisis. When you compare sentences, the magnitude of the crime and its impact on society often seem disconnected.

This is also true with government spending and taxes. The actual “settings” often don’t match what we think the should be. We are also usually unclear as to what the settings are at all.

The purpose of this idea would be to A) clarify what we feel is most important B) see how that matches with reality and C) develop a sense of where our priorities should go.

I don’t have the time to take this any further, but here’s what I mocked up as a possible Web tool to accomplish this.

Recently the General Services Administration conducted an open, public dialogue to solicit ideas about how the government could improve Federal .gov websites. The dialogue was conducted online using the IdeaScale platform and will be archived for future review. I’ve compiled my thoughts on the dialogue for the GSA team. It’s long, but I want to give as much feedback as I can.

You can jump to the ideas I found most useful.

The National Dialogue on Improving Federal Websites is a two-week online discussion of how the Federal government can better deliver information and services online. The dialogue will launch Monday, Sept. 19 at 2 pm ET and run until Friday, Sept. 30.  You’ll be able to access it at: http://web-reform-dialogue.ideascale.com/. Please join in the discussion.

I will be participating as a “dialogue catalyst” to help keep the conversation moving. I’ll be trying to connect ideas and ask good questions; draw people into the conversation who may not already be in it. I’d appreciate if you do the same. Join in. Share what you’ve learned. And if you think particular people would add to the conversation, reach out and ask or contact me and I will.

You can also follow comments about the dialogue on Twitter using the hashtag #dotgov.

When you have a worldview that looks to solve the big, underlying issues, you start with the problem and seek the solution that will fix it. Too often I feel like those of us developing Internet-related products or businesses are not thinking big enough; aren’t moving us ahead in really consequential ways.