Municipalist

Obama Web moves inspire some, but not all

Here are good sources for reviews of the Web moves by Team Obama, et. al.:

Transparency Initiatives Launched Today by White House -- Washington Post. More analysis in the Post here.

Federal government launches data.gov: "The site, managed by CIO Vivek Kundra, is intended to let businesses, organizations, and consumers access large sets of government data" -- Information Week.

Data.gov Now Live: Looks Nice But Short on Data -- Read Write Web.

100 days of WhiteHouse.gov: Where's the beef?

Jose Antonio Vargas from the Washington Post elicits some smart opinions on the state of the White House Web site. Great stuff from Andrew Rasiej, from the indispensable Personal Democracy Forum, Jim Harper of Cato Institute, Jon Henke of Next Right, and David Almacy. Such as: There is little "transparency," even after all the campaign promises; and locating basic documents can be a chore.

We have pointed out previously that upon closer inspection, WhiteHouse.gov disappoints on many counts.

But we also note Vargas quotes from David Weinberger, "a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society," who "was impressed by WhiteHouse.gov's blog, which is the centerpiece of the site."

In recent weeks, the blog has posted photos, videos and invited senior officials to blog, and he appreciates its more casual tone.

Dr. Jill Biden, a long-time educator who teaches at Northern Virginia Community College, blogged about welcoming the recipients of the 2009 Teachers of the Year award. "I hope someone reading this post might even be inspired to become a 2010, 2015, or 2020 Teacher of the Year," Biden wrote in the blog. "You won't regret it and our country needs you."

"The blogs are getting better. 'Better' means less PR-ish and more human," said Weinberger, who gave the site a B+. "They did a nice job live-blogging Earth Day, and they're letting people inside the White House occasionally post about what it's like to be there."

The blogs are getting better? Gee. And here I thought these people are already the "tech savviest administration in history."

Bev Godwin to White House

Just got the word here that Bev Godwin -- yet another Friend of Municipalist -- will become the White House's Director of Online Resources and Interagency Development. We have no idea what that is, but it sounds important, and no doubt it is. Bev is clearly the leader throughout the entire federal government on use of the Web for change.

Bev, director of USA.gov, is a leader among the Federal Web Managers Council, which recently wrote "Putting Citizens First: Transforming Online Government," for the Obama transition team.

Here is our interview with Bev from Dec. 11, 2007. We also wrote about Bev here.

Smoked: Archive from Bush-era anti-drug blog disappears

Those searching for clues about the direction of the Obama administration's policy plans on issues such as medical marijuana will not find any assistance at the blog published by the office of the official White House "drug czar."

That's because the first blog hosted by a cabinet-level agency lacks one thing as of this morning: content.

A total of three posts can be seen at Pushing Back, the blog operated by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). And none of these are dated before January 22. While all the previous 43 categories are still listed, clicking on each takes you to ... nowhere. All posts since the blog went live in February 2005 have been removed.

Under former director John Walters, Pushing Back did just that, vigorously opposing opponents of the war on drugs, directly, including those in the media. The blog hailed what it called successes by the Bush administration such as a 25 percent reduction in use of illegal drugs since 2001 by American youth.

New WhiteHouse.gov leaves out the details. Etc.

[Instead of writing multiple posts, I have added seven eight nine 10 updates here, over two nine 10 days two months. And I would also like to point to a piece from the Washington Post from March 2, 2009, headlined: "Web-Savvy Obama Team Hits Unexpected Bumps -- Issues of Technology, Security and Privacy Slow the New Administration's Effort to Foster Instant Communication."]

January 20, 2009: "Change has come for America," announces the revamped WhiteHouse.gov, which on first glance now calls to mind, at least graphically, the Barack Obama campaign site.

Early criticism suggests that the large, iconic Obama photo on the front sends the wrong message. But my guess is that photo will not be up there long.

Details are disappointingly brief inside the site about what is to come. And this is surprising to me. I was expecting these people to hit the ground running, announcing right out of the gate some major Web innovations. There is a blog, but not one from the President. Here is the first post, offering a few basics about what is to come at the site. A reference to some sort of plan where bills would be posted for public comment for a few days does not really impress. No word as to whether a "citizen's briefing book" feature like the one at the transition site Change.gov will migrate to the new White House site.

Today, it's all like the inaugural speech: thematic, more than programmatic. Bring us the details. We are ready. [A brief history of WhiteHouse.gov is here]

Update II: A page on the new site slams Bush: "President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur. Citing the Bush Administration's 'unconscionable ineptitude' in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims. ... "

Granted, this is only the second time in history that a White House Web site has passed to a new administration. Including such language about your predecessor that seems dragged from the campaign: Does that sound like Change for America?

Update III: A software blogger claims that coding at the new WhiteHouse.gov ensures many more pages are accessible from search engines, when comparing how the "robots.txt" file at the Bush WhiteHouse.gov was configured, which was set to block many pages at the site from searches, this blogger claims. The apparent inference is the Bush White House Web team did not want certain pages, that were otherwise publically available, fully accessible to search engines. "Compare this to the robot.txt from Bush’s era, and I think you’ve got a lovely little microcosm; one that points to a hopeful, and open future," this guy writes.

But not so fast.

Another blogger links and seems thrilled by this claim, publishing a long list of the number of pages that fell into the Bush site's "disallow" pile, compared to none from the Obama site. The robots.txt file, he notes, "lies on the server of a website and tells search engines which parts of a site they can index and which parts they can’t."

But several of the original poster's commenters disagree. Convincingly.

The third one down: "The old robots.txt was simply blocking text-only versions of pages. The full versions of the pages were available, not blocked and were fully indexed by google. Run a search and you’ll see."

Another commenter here: "Actually, Bush’s robots.txt file is a recommended practice for removing duplicate content. See [this explanation at Google.com ]. I’m guessing that Bush’s webmaster wanted only the full-html pages to be indexed and linked to, not the plaintext versions."

At which point the next commenter replies, with breathtaking literary flair: "awww…. :( You had to spoil the party…. :P"

Update IV: FLASH! -- "Ending marjiuana prohibition" won. Now THAT's crowdsourcing. Dude.

Update V, 10:37 p.m.: As predicted: The Barack photo is already long gone.

Update VI, Jan. 21: In a particularly breathless report, Josh Levs of CNN calls the new site a "revolutionary change" from the previous version, showing little awareness of any of the growing list of missteps such as: ... Text that references Iraq seems to advocate either: an agreement long since signed, or a new agreement nobody has heard about, or the text is simply copied over from another source that is months old ... A series of presidential profiles are poorly written and contain errors of fact, and George H.W. Bush is not treated kindly ... But it's OK: In office barely 24 hours, the Obama administration is already "the tech savviest administration in history."

Update VII, Jan. 22: The Washington Post notices some problems:

By late evening, the vaunted new White House Web site did not offer any updated posts about 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.

Nor did the site reflect the transparency Obama promised to deliver. "The President has not yet issued any executive orders," it stated hours after Obama issued executive orders to tighten ethics rules, enhance Freedom of Information Act rules and freeze the salaries of White House officials who earn more than $100,000.

The site was updated for the first time last night, when information on the executive orders was added. But there were still no pool reports or blog entries.

No one could quite explain the problem -- but they swore it would be fixed

Update VIII, Jan. 29: CNet News wonders about a bungled privacy policy:

Someone at the White House appears to be listening to those of us in the privacy community.

For the third time in just six days, the Obama administration has modified the White House Web site privacy policy in response to criticism from the blogosphere.

When the site launched on January 20, it exempted YouTube from federal anticookie tracking rules that would have otherwise cast a legal shadow over the use of embedded videos on the White House blog.

Reacting to criticism from the blogosphere, the White House first modified its Web site on Friday to limit the cookie exposure to only those users who clicked on videos. Then, on Sunday, the White House again tinkered with its privacy policy to scrub YouTube's name from the cookie exemption. ...

Update IX, Jan. 30: Columbia Journalism Review wonders about a bungled briefing transcript posting policy:

The previous administration sometimes edited White House briefing transcripts to polish the record. Bloggers, and some working reporters, compared the transcripts to the video and audio to prove this kind of ham-handed disrespect for empirical facts.

The Obama administration is also editing briefing transcripts. So far it posts only snippets of some White House briefings at whitehouse.gov. Shapiro promised that would be corrected soon.

Update X: March 27, 2009: Cato on Obama's transparency promises: He's 0 for 10.

For Bush's WhiteHouse.gov, a legacy of innovation

[Update: For a first-hours look at the new WhiteHouse.gov, see my post here.]

It turns out that George Bush's WhiteHouse.gov was groundbreaking in many ways. I began to develop this here, but the guy who actually is responsible for much of that innovation does a much better job of describing it all here. Former White House Internet director David Almacy directed numerous upgrades and firsts, including the site's comprehensive redesign in 2007.

He points to an example of major media getting it wrong by claiming in one instance: “No President-elect or President has ever turned the radio address into a multi-media opportunity before.” Not so. Bush was first.

Here is yet another piece about Obama's tech superiority, in this case in Wired. Go crazy. But this one does quote Friend of Municipalist Bev Godwin, who is director of USA.gov, and Sheila Campbell, head of the federal government's best practices team. From the piece:

For starters, the federal government operates more than 24,000 separate sites, many of them years out of date. "Nobody stepped back and asked strategically, how do we do this?" Godwin says. "Whenever there is a new initiative or program, they put up a new Web site." And the first thing they usually do on that site, she says, is post a bandwidth-hogging picture of the bureaucrat in charge.

Godwin and Campbell have been pushing government agencies to treat citizens more like customers, rebuilding their sites to help visitors do things like find loans or obtain passports—rather than serve as static repositories for press releases and personnel photos. "At Housing and Urban Development, for example, one of the missions is to reduce homelessness," Godwin says. "If you go to HUD.gov, can you find shelter? The answer is no." If the government can improve itself in these little ways, they say, great.

The piece goes on to detail various other issues legal and cultural out there that will stand in the way of a truly wired presidency. It points to the huge value of having citizens "feel" connected, or simply believing that they are listened to. Noted. But that's not the same as truly being listened to. Accomplish that, and we will have something.