Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: January 23, 2009 7:19:28 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Staff Finds White House in the Technological  
Dark Ages

[Note:  This item comes from reader Monty Solomon.  DLH]

From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Date: January 22, 2009 7:24:40 PM PST
Subject: Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2009; A01

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future,
the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the
rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential
campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints
of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of
disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security
regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate
with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging.
Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power
through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman
Bill Burton said of his new digs.

In many ways, the move into the White House resembled a first day at
school: Advisers wandered the halls, looking for their offices. Aides
spent hours in orientation, learning such things as government ethics
rules as well as how their paychecks will be delivered. And everyone
filled out a seemingly endless pile of paperwork.

There were plenty of first-day glitches, too, as calls to many lines
in the West Wing were met with a busy signal all morning and those to
the main White House switchboard were greeted by a recording,
redirecting callers to the presidential Web site. A number of
reporters were also shut out of the White House because of lost
security clearance lists.

By late evening, the vaunted new White House Web site did not offer
any updated posts about President Obama's busy first day on the job,
which included an inaugural prayer service, an open house with the
public, and meetings with his economic and national security teams.

Nor did the site reflect the transparency Obama promised to deliver.
"The President has not yet issued any executive orders," it stated
hours after Obama issued executive orders to tighten ethics rules,
enhance Freedom of Information Act rules and freeze the salaries of
White House officials who earn more than $100,000.

The site was updated for the first time last night, when information
on the executive orders was added. But there were still no pool
reports or blog entries.

No one could quite explain the problem -- but they swore it would be  
fixed.

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday,
right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was
impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which
computers could be used for which purposes. The team members,
accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with
six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce,
assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left
struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

Senior advisers chafed at the new arrangements, which severely limit
mobility -- partly by tradition but also for security reasons and to
ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential
Records Act.

..


<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/21/AR2009012104249.html 
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