Disconnected phone lines, old computer software, no instant messaging, no outside access to e-mail accounts and no social networking - these were the things Obama's tech team got to see in the White House when they turned up to work on their first day.
The White House new-media team found it hard to identify the configuration of computers in the White House to do any useful updates. The team members, who were used to working on Mac systems, found computers with very old versions of Windows installed and in fact not enough computers for use. Laptops were also assigned to only a few people.
There were no immediate updates on the new White House web site regarding 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. On Thursday 22nd, the site was updated with information about the recent executive orders but no pool reports or new blog entries. President Obama and his team were forced to use Gmail accounts while they waited for their White House e-mail to become active.
The new White House website is undergoing an overhaul currently and may not look as fine tuned as the Change.gov or BarackObama.com sites. Obama's new media team is letting search engines index almost everything on the site by shrinking the size of robots.txt, the file used by search engines to index the website's content, to 2 lines. The previous government had set the file size to 2377 lines to prevent the search engines from logging the data found in the white house website.
Below is the current robots.txt which can be found here:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/
And the old robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /query.html
Disallow: /omb/search
Disallow: /omb/query.html
Disallow: /expectmore/search
Disallow: /expectmore/query.html
Disallow: /results/search
and so on.....
A new blog section is opened on the White House web site which will act as an informal record of events, speeches and decisions but will not allow comments (as of now). There's no word yet on whether restricted access to Facebook, Gmail or Yahoo IM will be lifted or not. Obama and his team are not allowed to do instant messaging. Flicker and YouTube are still on the suspect list. However, Twitter is allowed in House premises.
The White House has also exempted YouTube from strict rules relating to the use of cookies on federal agency Web sites.
In other news Sun Chairman Scott McNealy has reportedly been asked by President Obama to present a paper outlining the benefits that open source software would provide to the government.
McNealy, though not having finished the paper yet, was quick to outline some basic advantages in a BBC interview which included its cost-effectiveness and productiveness, as well as security, software and reliability.
Neowin reporter Mitchell LeBlanc contributed to this report
From the sounds of it though, it looks like Obama is getting to grips with it all and should have the White House up to snuff in a very short space of time. Man would I love a job sorting all of that out, I doubt they'd let a Brit do it though :-)
Technology can simply work as an accelerator of progress, and is not likely to be the sole source of it. Having the most advanced technologies does not guarantee success; just think about Vietnam.
Technology can simply work as an accelerator of progress, and is not likely to be the sole source of it. Having the most advanced technologies does not guarantee success; just think about Vietnam.
why does the government need social networking and instant messaging? THEY DONT. Look at any real company. Do they want their employees wasting their time on MSN? No! Is facebook and youtube blocked? yes!
Boo hoo, they didn't have macbook pros... they had old versions of windows... i wonder if it was XP >.<
Seriously though, this is a pretty lame article and/or topic
It's not lame at all.
Boo hoo, they didn't have macbook pros... they had old versions of windows... i wonder if it was XP >.<
Seriously though, this is a pretty lame article and/or topic
You must be living in the dark ages.
IM is used in most corporations and office environments. All of my past IT/Telco positions, including my current role rely on email, IM and VoIP.
Boo hoo, they didn't have macbook pros... they had old versions of windows... i wonder if it was XP >.<
Seriously though, this is a pretty lame article and/or topic
You must be living in the dark ages.
IM is used in most corporations and office environments. All of my past IT/Telco positions, including my current role rely on email, IM and VoIP.
we have email and voip, but no instant messaging... its not effective. Pick up the phone and CALL the person. If its less urgent email them.
PS I work at bombardier aerospace at the moment, so its not like im speaking without a fair amount of experienece
Even though "Neowin reporter Mitchell LeBlanc contributed to this report", I am finding it hard to believe that Neowin has an inside man from the Whitehouse. This rubbish journalism from Neowin is really getting up my nerves, and please don't try to hide behind "Unprofessional Journalism looks better" because that is just non-sense.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2104249_pf.html
Are you done now?
Now now, it is not plagiarism.... its the new advert strategy.
Yeah it is, and it's making this site complete garbage.
Put the source link at the bottom back
"What?"
i support the above statement...
Last edited by creamhackered on 23 Jan 2009 - 21:15
Also, you say other sites do it (which is NOT an excuse) but none are rewording articles and burying the links - Slashdot provides a quoted segment with a clearly embedded link in the opening sentence; Digg links straight to the site from the title and has a brief summary; Bluesnews links to the source in the opening sentence and provides a brief summary. It is only Neowin that is omitting sources and rewording entire articles. Other sites provide a link in the opening sentence and a brief summary.
I respectfully ask you to not be so flippant and confrontational and to please address my actual concerns. This would all be avoided if the primary source was located in the opening sentence like most other sites.
Not only is it destroying Neowin's credibility, but it also is going to start raising a red flag from the news sources that actually put some real blood-and-sweat in bringing this news. I'd hate to see Neowin shutdown because they can't seem to comprehend the importance of giving credit where credit is due.
Hi,
It was a mistake from my side and it was my responsibility to add news sources. I am sorry for not adding the news source. Its been added now.
If these services (facebook, gmail, et cetera...) can be used cautiously, then I'm all for it. It's against my core set of values and beliefs that restrictions be imposed upon social networking, instant messaging and email. But at the same time, I hope nothing bad comes from it all. Maybe the White House should look into their own closed social networking and instant messaging.
White House Already Well Wired, Bush Staffers Say
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481647,00.html
Boo frickin hoo. Do your job, not dick about with Facebook et al.
As to the robots.txt, some entries make sense. Not that there should be a publicly accessible cgi-bin folder anyway, but you don't need search engines to index search pages, especially results pages unless you don't have your own search mechanism in place. After all, if you use Google to search for something you don't want links to a results page on the results page.
Amen to that.
Please think before you post in future.
You actually think that Youtube is a valuable source of news?
Not as a single entity. But many news sources that I read often link to videos provided on youtube. Not everyone is capable of hosting their own videos online. For many news organisations and individuals, youtube is a means of being able to get the message heard. Don't dismiss it so easily.
However, obviously 90% of the crap on youtube is exactly that, crap.
I never said news, I said media. But yes, it is important. Obviously it shouldn't be taken on its own, much like Fox News shouldn't, but it is irresponsible to ignore or dismiss it. It's like Twitter - I have absolutely no interest in it but governments should be aware of it, particularly when it has been used to report breaking news more accurately than the major networks.
Please, if people aren't going to discuss this maturely can they please not comment.
Please think before you post in future.
This is hilarious, 99% of youtube has zero value and it is exactly about wasting time instead of working. There is nothing ignorant about dismissing youtube, but there is something absolutely hilarious about you trying to spin it as a relevant media source. I suspect you think Wikipedia is relevant as well.
What it sounds like to me is some bitchy college student volunteer who never had a real job in their life complained that they couldn't dick around with their macs on the interwebs. The media hangs onto it and spun it around to sound like the previous administration didn't use technology at all.
White House IT is handled by the White House Communications Agency and they fall under the Defense Information Systems Agency. Not Bush or any President before him set White House IT policy. I know a couple people who worked for the WHCA and have told me that its well staffed and well funded. In fact, if you're in the military and want to work there, you have to go through an interview process. You don't just get assigned there, you earn the position based on your knowledge and background.
Everyone knows Cheney and Rumsfeld were running the show anyways.
"[they] found computers with very old versions of Windows installed and in fact not enough computers for use."
Yeah, that part.
Now look sad and say: "Weapons of mass destruction"
Sounds like good security practice to me.
A great deal can be said for Socialism and Marxism . . . provided you understand what they are. They're more than just terms thrown around in order to use as pejoratives when attacking someone. And if you really want to learn about these ideologies, then listening to rehashed cold-war analyses of these terms, seen through Western pop-culture and a nationalist American lens is not the way to go about it.
Resist hallucinogenic drugs!!!
/not a southerner
//gets a kick out of dirty pennies
Daddy-O
I guess with that logic we should still be using quill pens and writing by candlelight.
and my Dad used to have to walk to school 2 miles both ways...in a snowstorm....
lol.
Looks like the Obama folks are not up to speed on secure technologies, versus using YouTube and FireFox.
Obama is going to tax us to death so he can buy the latest and greatest machines for each room in the whitehouse so he can conveniently update his homies on Facebook. Yippee.
Last edited by ermax on 23 Jan 2009 - 21:51
Title is racist.
"In the dark ages" is a common phrase for the use of outdated technology, nothing more, nothing less.
Gmail? Sure, let's let Google have access to what's going on in the White House. They already have millions of other users' info. documented on their servers.
Yahoo! IM? Wow, it's absolutely the worst.
Why is it YouTube only? There's other video sites out there, and this shows clear favoritism to a particular site, and in a way, kind of endorses YouTube as the only video sharing site to go to.
How can they be so ignorant to how Windows works? Even if it's an old version, you'd hope that they'd have had some experience working with it. I mean it's not like it's impossible to use media/web programs on Windows.
A Washington Post story this morning caught my attention: "Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages." It's not a good sign, but not for the reasons the story implies.
Some, perhaps most of the article, details problems that probably happen in every White House transition. Suddenly there are large numbers of new employees and it just takes time to get them their stuff, like phone numbers and network accounts. This part is dog bites man. Incoming Bush staff in 2001 even claimed petty sabotage, that outgoing Clinton staff had pulled the "W" keys from the keyboards.
I have to think that these problems are inevitable in White House transitions: You can't just bulk-import a list of names into the directory at a place like this. The right way to do it would be to have the staff start prior to Jan. 20 so that they are checked out and set up, but that seems to be a political impossibility because, in this case, it would have Obama staffers working in the Bush White House.
The real eye-opening part of the Post article is where they make complaints like this: "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."
Oh dear! You mean they can't just run any old Internet application on their White House computers? They can't use whatever e-mail system they want? Welcome to the secure enterprise, kids.
The White House new-media team was especially hobbled. "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." There are no specifics about the software, and I'm wondering if the "six-year-old versions of Microsoft software" reference is to Office 2003. But if it refers to actual video editing software then I'm not sure what it is. Other than Movie Maker, does Microsoft even make titling software?
One gets the sense that the Obama team has no sense of what security restrictions they will run into because of the considerations necessary at the White House and why they are there. You can't follow the security business over the last few years and not come away knowing that workstations have to be locked down, that access to public services needs to be restricted to those which have been specifically vetted and, perhaps, with which specific security arrangements have been made.
But the part that really bothers me is the whining about outside e-mail accounts. If I started a job like this and found out I might not have an e-mail address for a few days I would be pretty angry and reach out for some solution. But didn't we just go through a series of e-mail scandals in the Bush White House part of which was related to the use of outside e-mail systems? Officials were called to testify before Congress and threatened with criminal penalties over that. And Alaska Governor Sarah Palin came under much criticism for using a Yahoo e-mail account for official business. An ABC News story said at the time: 'By using non-governmental e-mail systems, "Your information is out there available, beyond the official mechanisms there to protect it," said Amit Yoran, the nation's first cybersecurity chief.'
The Post article makes a condescending reference to these restrictions being in place "...partly by tradition but also for security reasons and to ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential Records Act." Shortly thereafter it says that officials in the Press Office set up Gmail accounts with the permission of the White House counsel. Oh well, no biggie, I guess.
In some time, maybe as much as a month, the staff will be all set up and know what they have to do in order to get their work done. But if they're as impatient as this article indicates, I'm concerned. Getting your work done is an obviously admirable goal, but it can't be used to override security procedures. If that means no Facebook group for "White House Staff" then too bad.
Source
I still like the analysis, regardless of the validity of the article.
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