Government offices may be prone to bureaucracy and inefficiency, but they're also places where technology is being used to drive new ways of working and to deliver better government services. InformationWeek is looking for examples of such tech innovation in local, state, and federal government.Government IT efforts are often hobbled by outdated technologies, rules and regulations, and arcane processes, but creative IT pros in government are finding ways around such obstacles. In federal government, the Open Government Directive, cloud computing, and data center consolidation are some of the megatrends that are empowering CIOs and their teams to do things differently. State and local governments, facing similar mandates, have their own game-changing initiatives underway.

In an earlier blog post, I asked, What's the next breakthrough in government IT? Some of my favorite examples are California's goal of reducing its data center footprint by 50%, NASA's Nebula compute cloud, and the software-development competitions springing up in San Francisco and elsewhere.

Just this week, the White House is promoting competitions and prizes as a way of spurring fresh ideas.

InformationWeek wants to hear about case studies of tech innovation in government. We plan to identify projects deserving of recognition, then highlight those initiatives in our magazine, on our Web site, and in a special report.

So, if you're with a government agency that's applying technology in pursuit of increased transparency, greater efficiency and effectiveness, improved services, or some other break from the norm, we want to hear about it.

Click here to access the 2010 InformationWeek Government IT Innovators Nomination Form. Our April 30 application deadline is approaching, so please push this to the top of your to-do list.

InformationWeek has published an in-depth report on cloud computing and service-level agreements. Download the report here (registration required).