I Thought These Were the People Who "Got" It

In "White House blog site gets off to a bad start" one of the bloggers for the Los Angeles Times gives low marks to Obama's team for timely updating of relevant postings. For example, some mainstream newspapers had the story in print before Obama's executive order to close the Guantanamo detention facility was posted to Whitehouse.gov. Privacy advocates like Chris Soghoian and critics of the "Googlization of everything" like Siva Vaidhyanathan have expressed concerns about a number of features of the site. Now law professor Howard M. Friedman is ringing warning bells that there may be "No transparency on the Obama White House website," as "pool reports" go neglected and webmasters delete materials with legal and historical significance from the previous administration.

A final irritation is that the Obama White House has taken down all the primary source documents (Executive Orders and Proclamations) that were on the Bush White House site. Many of these still have the force of law, and continued access to them in some way would be most helpful.

Perhaps the new White House webmaster's office has not yet quite gotten its act together. However I would expect more since the first White House Blog posting that appeared emphasized that the new website (put up within minutes of Obama's swearing-in) "will feature timely and in-depth content to keep everyone up-to-date and educated."

During the election my husband would facetiously say to me, "You should hope McCain wins. Then there will continue to be screw-ups to write about on a daily basis. You'll be blogging for another four years, to be sure." Unfortunately, it looks like there will still be posts on a daily basis, with a number from Whitehouse.gov, even as an era of change begins.