Washington, DC (AHN) - The technologically savvy Obama campaign was taken by surprise upon their move into the White House. For a staff in charge of the launching perhaps the most technologically-advanced presidential campaign in history, the lack of technology in the White House caught them by quite a surprise.
Used to the comfort of 21st century technologies like iPhones, email and broadband internet, the staff was less than pleased to find the White House stuck in the technological dark ages with old computer software, disconnected phone lines, and security regulations prohibiting email, IM, and even Facebook.
[snip]Many Obama team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, were instead given computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing.
Senior advisers were less than pleased with the new arrangements, which severely limit mobility, partly for security reasons and to ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential Records Act.
Wonder if Bush took his Pong game with him, too....
7 comments:
I heard they removed all the >> from the cuneiform typewriters.
And just try to get those clay tablets to lay flat for faxing!...
Windows XP and Office 2003 are thoroughly debugged and relatively stable. If they had upgraded on the way out the door, the entire system would be less useful than a clay tablet.
What a surprise - not everyone is supposed to know everything that goes own in the White House. People have to have security clearances and keep secrets.
The Obama people are WATB, who obviously have never worked for a major business or the real government.
They have the nuclear launch codes in the White House, so security is kind of important.
For all the hype about the new whitehouse.gov, I found it useless when I attempted to find a press release about the anniversary of Roe the other day.
It appears to me that team Obama is filled with young people who are accustomed to using technology in their daily lives more than the Bushies were, but if whitehouse.gov is representative, there are no high-powered IT professionals among them. Perhaps they are less interested in a nuclear launch than a power lunch.
I hope this is just the newness of the site. Give them time, you guys...
(But they really should have hired guys like both of you who actually know what they're doing....)
Lol, I take it you guys don't have cushy government jobs. I have a "desired" job (as far as they go in the govt) and my computer is still using Firefox 1.0 and the Internet Explorer can barely pull up web pages (not updated for "security reasons" of course). The older people in my office don't mind, but I am pulling my hair out. I feel for these kids moving into the White House. 1990's technology is a swift kick to the crotch when you are used to the newest toys.
The older people in my office don't mind, but I am pulling my hair out. I feel for these kids moving into the White House. 1990's technology is a swift kick to the crotch when you are used to the newest toys.
My sympathies, DB. It is so hard to go from a computer with state of the art technology to something even a few years old. It feels like walking in mud...
My husband was responsible for forcing computers into the science classrooms, getting the library up to speed, otherwise they'd still be moving clay tablets around.
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