This just makes no sense whatsoever:
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.
I read another report somewhere that half the computers are still using Office 2000, and unless my memory is playing games with me, I remember similar stories when the Bush team took over in 2000. I understand that there are massive security concerns, and I understand that there are most likely thousands of rules and regulations guiding (obstructing) the acquisition of new equipment for the White House, but this just makes no sense to me whatsoever. I think the first order of business for the tech staff at the White House is to make sure that at the very least, the White House is using technology equivalent to what you would find in the average High School computer lab. There really is no excuse for this, and if there are laws and rules that need to be changed, change them. This should not be a partisan issue, and a complete overhaul of the WH technology along with an update of the rules that guide the acquisition of that technology so that they never fall behind again would be a solid move, and one that would serve future administrations, regardless of political affiliation, well.