Addressing the State of the White House Technology

Since President Obama was sworn in and controversial Washington Post article discusses the state of the technology situation in the White House as the Bush Administration moved out and the Obama Administration moved in. The article takes the angle of the Obama crew being forced to step back into the "dark ages" and use "old software" and Microsoft instead of Mac, disconnected phone lines, etc. Obama's team were using Gmail addresses because their new white house addresses had yet to be set up. An Obama spokesman said it was like "going from an Xbox to an Atari."


"Bureaucracy is nonpartisan," he says. "Moving 3,000 people out and 3,000 people in is a Herculean task." That is worth considering when it comes to the phone lines, email addresses, etc. Although one might think they would have had plenty of time to get this worked out by the time the new President was ready to take office.

As far as the technology itself, a lot of people around the Internet are taking the stance of "welcome to the real world". According to
This is not a story about digital pioneers getting cast back into the Stone Age; it's about a privileged elite learning how the rest of the country has to work. Those "six-year-old versions of Microsoft software"? That must mean Windows XP. If you haven't noticed, most people still prefer XP over Microsoft's clunky, buggy, annoying new Vista. Here's a suggestion for the Obamans: Stop whining about the tools taxpayers have paid for, and get to work learning how to cope with what your employer gives you, just like the rest of us.

But still, you have to think the people behind a Presidential campaign that was practically built on using technology and
You've probably read about how the Obama administration cannot use Facebook, instant messenger clients, and outside email accounts. How will this kind of stuff affect the transparency that the Obama administration is trying to maintain?

Transparency and New Media

If you were expecting to be updated from the new staff via Twitter, you might want to read

The unblocked Google from crawling info on the White House site. Previously there were a lot of pages being blocked that were available to the public anyway.

Open Source and Changing Tradition

The new administration may not have been thrilled about the state of the White House's technology, and there may be certain aspects of it that just can't be sacrificed, but that doesn't mean that change isn't an option. Already Obama has shown an interest in open source. Sun Chairman Scott Mcnealy says that the President has asked him to author a white paper on potential benefits to the government of open source solutions.