Staff find White House in technological dark ages

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? NoFacebook 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,” spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.

On the first day,the new White House website did not offer any updated posts about President Obama’s busy first day on the job. Nor did the site reflect the transparency Obama promised to deliver.

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

A member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday,only to discover that it was impossible to know which programmes could be updated,or which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members,accustomed to working on Macintoshes,found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

One White House official,who arrived breathless on Thursday after being held up at the exterior gate,found he had no computer or telephone number. Recently called back from overseas duty,he ended up using his foreign cellphone. Another official whose transition cellphone was disconnected left a message temporarily referring callers to his wife’s phone.

Thankfully,there were no missing letters from the computer keyboards,as Bush officials had complained of during their transition in 2001.