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Washington DC is a strange town when it comes to politics. In most cities across the United States, politics, on both the national and local levels, is viewed as a bit of a nuisance. People switch the channel when campaign ads pop up during local elections. They avert their eyes from the political signs that pop up on their neighbor’s front lawn.

And talk about the local Senate or governor’s race with their co-workers or next-door neighbors? It’s usually frowned upon.

But DC is different. DC is politics.

That’s why I was excited to read in the Feb. 16 online version of InformationWeek that Washington, DC has launched a new Web dashboard that makes the performance of local government officials more transparent to residents (http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/state-local/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222900508&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News).

TrackDC, which you can find online here (http://track.dc.gov/), offers performance reviews on about 50 District government agencies. Visitors can find information on how much agencies are spending, how law enforcement agencies are reacting to crime or how many building permits the Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs passed out last month.

Yes, some of the information provided by TrackDC is drier than unbuttered toast. But if you’re a local government junkie, you can, for instance, access TrackDC to discover that the DC Film – Motion Picture & Television Development agency, charged with assisting local filmmakers, had spent $132,303 of its $435,328 yearly budget as of Feb. 16.

I know that many of you have no interest in that fact at all. And I know that many of you might never visit TrackDC. But if you are trying to sell a home in the District, you should consider TrackDC to be a definite positive.

Many home buyers do look at local governments before deciding whether they should buy in an area. They may also shy away from an area, either consciously or subconsciously, if they have a negative image of a local government. Washington DC hasn’t always been blessed by local politicians with the most sterling of reputations. We might not like to admit it, but that does have an influence on potential home buyers.

In today’s tough housing market, every advantage helps when you’re trying to sell a house. TrackDC is a fairly minor benefit. But if it can help ease the concerns outsiders may have about our local government, than that’s a good thing.

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