This just in over the transom from a concerned U.G. reader about the shockingly bad condition of the White House’s IT infrastructure on Day 1 of the Obama Administration (from Anne Kornblut’s piece in the Washington Post):
I kind of got the impression that the Post and NPR were making a snarky kind of comparison about those Obama "whiz kids" who can’t even plug in their phones.
But the article underscored how technologically dysfunctional our government is and why there should be an apolitical WH staff that serves any administration that comes in. Why should top WH officials have figure out how to send email on their first day? Shouldn’t there be assistants ready to serve them? Shouldn’t there be an apoliltical civil servant staff with technical expertise, as the have in the UK, that serves whatever administration that takes power?
The army has quartermasters, right? The navy has pursers. When you come in, you get your kit and you’re ready to do your job. How can it be that the White House has no procedure for getting computers and cell phones ready for the next administration? If Ted Stevens were president, this might make sense. If John McCain had become president, he might not even have noticed it. But since it looks like President Obama’s goal is to leave this country better than he found it, his staff should take charge of this issue and create an IT policy that guarantees an "orderly transition" for White House staff as well. What if something disastrous happened on January 21? What were Bush Administration staffers doing with such ancient computers? (not much, apparently). How is all this even possible a generation into the Information Age? How could Obama’s staff not know about this problem ahead of time? I don’t even have enough question marks in my computer to take this issue on. -NH