WASHINGTON - US PRESIDENT-ELECT Barack Obama opened up his official transition website to questions from the public on Wednesday with his team promising to provide answers to the most popular queries.

Change.gov, Obama's website until he is sworn in as president on January 20, said the new tool, called 'Open for Questions', was designed to help Americans 'make their voices heard'.

'Today, we're rolling out a new feature that lets you ask the transition team any questions you have about the issues that are important to you,' the transition team said in a posting on Change.gov.

''Open for Questions' is yet another step to open up the transition process to the millions of Americans who are following closely, encouraging them to take part in the process and make their voices heard,' it said.

The feature allows registered users of Change.gov to post questions directly on the website. Other users vote 'yes' or 'no' as to whether they like a question or flag it as 'inappropriate'.

Registration requires a user to submit their first and last name, their zip code and email address and to select a password.

The questions move up or down in rankings according to the number of votes and the transition team said 'popular questions selected by the community of web users on Change.gov will be answered on a regular basis by the Obama team'.

As of mid-afternoon on Wednesday, there had been 56,642 votes on 928 questions submitted by 1,436 people at change.gov/OpenForQuestions.

The top question with 645 'yes' votes was from a user named 'Diane' in New Jersey who asked: 'What will you do to establish transparency and safeguards against waste with the rest of the Wall Street bailout money?'

Questions which had been voted out as 'inappropriate' by users included one asking the president-elect to 'come clean' about his contacts with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is facing corruption charges.

Mr Obama called on Mr Blagojevich to resign on Wednesday, a day after the governor was arrested on charges which included an attempt to sell off Mr Obama's Senate seat.

Mr Obama promised during the presidential campaign to run a more transparent and interactive administration if elected and the 'Open for Questions' tool is his latest step in that direction.

Over the weekend, the transition team unveiled a feature on Change.gov called 'Seat at the Table'.

It calls for the proceedings of meetings between the Obama transition team and outside organisations to be published on Change.gov and allows members of the public to comment on them.

Last month, Change.gov opened a public forum for suggestions called 'Join the Discussion', inviting users to submit their views on health care, an issue Mr Obama has identified as a priority.

The transition team's moves towards greater dialogue and openness have accelerated recently after a few initial missteps.

When Change.gov was launched on November 6 following Mr Obama's election victory it included an appeal to users to share their ideas by email.

But the site did not provide a public forum to display the submissions, prompting criticism from supporters of greater transparency and more public involvement.

Mr Obama's initial use of video-sharing site YouTube also met with a mixed response.

While he earned praise for putting his weekly address to the nation on YouTube he earned some criticism for not allowing viewers to comment on his first YouTube videos. The comment forum has since been enabled. -- AFP