If you're like millions of Americans, you spent two exciting weeks in August cheering on the United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing as U.S. athletes brought home more medals than any other nation in the world—a full 110 of them!

In fact, Michael Phelps himself brought home more gold medals than anyone in the history of the Olympics. If Phelps were a country, he'd be tied in tenth place with France, Ukraine, and Netherlands for the most gold medals won—quite a force to be reckoned with.

Now, consider this: If there was an Olympics for websites, www.socialsecurity.gov would be the Michael Phelps of that competition. Over the years, Social Security's website has been not only among the best in government, but the best in all industries.

For example, Social Security’s Multilanguage Gateway, our website that provides important information to people in 15 languages, received the Standard of Excellence WebAward in the government category from the 2007 Web Marketing Association competition. The 2007 WebAwards named the best websites in 96 industry categories. Nominations for best website came from interactive agencies and website marketing departments in more than 33 countries from around the world.

Just recently, in the second quarter of 2008, Social Security's Website brought home the Gold, Silver, and Bronze! The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) tracks customer satisfaction and rates websites for their performance. ACSI rated three of Social Security's websites as the three top sites in government. The websites cited were the Social Security's online application for extra help with Medicare prescription drug coverage, the online application for Social Security benefits and Business Services Online. We expect to take home the medals again—current scores show that our new online Retirement Estimator is scoring even higher than those three winners.

Microsoft Corp, with Government Technology's Public CIO Magazine, awarded Social Security the Microsoft Government Solutions Award in the Government to Citizen category. This award is for e-initiatives aiming to enhance government-to-government or government-to-citizen interaction, transactions, and/or services and was given to recognize the Internet Social Security Benefit Application.

Whether you want to plan your retirement or apply for it, look into other benefits available or learn about the history of the program, you can do it all at Social Security's website. Visit the Olympian of websites: www.socialsecurity.gov.