Mr. Potter’s IT world

 

 

Today, came the news that Barak Obama will get to keep his Blackberry. Or, more correctly a modified highly secure Blackberry made by General Dynamics, now referred to as the ObamaBerry. Score one for Barak, at least for keeping in touch with family and friends (no official communications allowed). Additionally, as the Whitehouse staff began to setup their offices today, they were surprised by the relatively ancient technology they found there: 6 yr old Windows PCs, non-functioning phone lines, a couple of laptops, and no email accounts! The Macintosh & web 2.0 savvy staffers who during the campaign so artfully utilized facebook, youtube, twitter, and other social networking to spread the message were at a loss to even place closed captioning on a video clip for the website.

The staffers quickly setup their own gmail accounts, only to be told that no outside email accounts will be allowed. It remains to be seen if the Whitehouse staffers will get to retain the use of some of their social media, but already the new Whitehouse website sports a new web2.0 look. There is already a framework in place for the publishing of:

• executive orders
• In-depth descriptions of the administration’s agenda
• the Whitehouse weblog (no commenting allowed however)
• the weekly Obama video addresses
• slideshows, and other interactive and participatory content.