Travelers Can Write Yelp Reviews For the TSA

The agency will now be able to claim its own official pages on Yelp and launch new ones “to listen and respond to customer comments”, the federal government’s DigitalGov initiativesaid in a post of its own.

She uses that as a jumping-off point to argue that the government has become too big and corrupt, and then to not-so-subtly suggest that she’s the one who can fix it. So all in all, it’s your standard, run-of-the-mill, self-serving Yelp review.

“We encourage Yelpers to review any of the thousands of agency field offices, TSA checkpoints, national parks, Social Security Administration offices, landmarks and other places already listed on Yelp if you have good or bad feedback to share about your experiences”, Yelp wrote in a blog post.

People have been leaving unofficial Yelp reviews for the Transportation Security Administration and various awful DMVs around the US for a while, but now the government says it’s reading those reviews. But they can still tell whether a page has been claimed if, under the business information, there remains a link that reads, “Work here?” And I doubt they will.

Andy Stoltzfus, vice president of Voce Connect, a digital-consulting firm, said the deal is not what is expected of a massive federal government.

The Obama administration has sought to use technology to make government operate more like the private sector in recent years, including creating a Web-based exchange for health care that the president compared to sites such as Kayak or Amazon.com.

Anyways, the apex of usefulness for these reviews has already happened.

Have you had a bad experience at a TSA checkpoint?

It’s a novel way to campaign, but I’m guessing Fiorina’s “take-down” will have minimal impact on the TSA’s policies.

Reviewing federal agencies on Yelp may soon feel more like a two-way dialogue rather than a shout into the wind, the company announced on Tuesday.

[The Hill via Yelp].