Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

[Jim]

I read this story and it occurred to me that this is the LAST thing I would want published.

The O team has had unprecedented access during this transition.  But instead of taking some of those resources and planning to move the crew from Chicago to DC they were going around head hunting.

Seems to me that any executive with a move in their sights would demand that the logistics be seen to as opposed to what they did do.

Not only does the O's lack of executive skills come into highlight, so does the Chicago Mafia's.

Nobody is driving the bus....

[Redstatecka]

Sorry, but the story just doesn't hold water.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for Obama's transition team to not have known about this. Especially given the manner in which Obama has used Internet technology and mobile telephony, etc.

The Democrats are whining because that is what they do best. That and blaming others for their shortcomings, ignorance and just plain old stupidity.

But, of course, the advocacy/adversary media will spin the story as it did.

[Tess]

Sorry, but the story just doesn't hold water.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for Obama's transition team to not have known about this. Especially given the manner in which Obama has used Internet technology and mobile telephony, etc.

The Democrats are whining because that is what they do best. That and blaming others for their shortcomings, ignorance and just plain old stupidity.

But, of course, the advocacy/adversary media will spin the story as it did.

Of course they knew.  The thing is, they couldn't do anything about it before they were officially in office.  Bush was adamant about making sure there was a very smooth transition.  It isn't like they walked in and said, "What?  I've never seen this before!"  It is yet another stunt as part of the three ring circus that is the obama administration.  And a way to show how inept Bush was.  In reality things were done to protocol and there was no need for staffers to check their personal email or go on facebook while at work because they were actually WORKING.  This time around those people are going to need something to do while Obama wanders aimlessly around trying to strong arm reporters and chatting away on his blackberry.   

[Airwolf]

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.

http://www.washingtonpost...T2009012104276&s_pos=

No outside leaks of information to the enemies of the USA or in reality more like hampered.

[TxRadioguy]

Sorry, but the story just doesn't hold water.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for Obama's transition team to not have known about this. Especially given the manner in which Obama has used Internet technology and mobile telephony, etc.

The Democrats are whining because that is what they do best. That and blaming others for their shortcomings, ignorance and just plain old stupidity.

But, of course, the advocacy/adversary media will spin the story as it did.

Considering that the majority of his staff were in those very same offices a scant 9 years ago...this shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.

[bijou]

President Barack Obama's aides, who ran the most tech-savvy US election campaign in history, have been forced into a red-faced admission - the White House email system has crashed.

"Our email system is not working so well," press spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters at the start of his daily briefing on Monday.

"We'll endeavour to get you information from earlier in the day, hopefully in a little bit more of a timely manner, if we can get the email to work."

At one stage, Obama aides were forced to turn back the clock and hand out copies of memoranda signed by the president on cutting global warming, not via email as is normal, but by the dead tree method, on paper.

The email meltdown was all the more embarrassing as the White House only last week had revealed that the famously connected new president Barack Obama had won a battle to keep his BlackBerry -- albeit a high security encrypted device.
...

Heh

[thundley4]

The more cutting edge technology is also the most likely to break down, as the story above indicates, and also the more likely to be hacked.   Ask the RIAA and Hollywood about broken encryptions.