The Daily Background

You know you’re really in the 21st century when… There are a few stories floating around about how new White House employees are irked that they can’t use instant messaging anymore, and that they’re concerned that this will impact their efficiency. Ditto with stories about how Obama fought tooth and nail, eventually winning the right to keep his Blackberry (Bush didn’t even use email). The Washington Post today has an extended story about how aides feel they’re “going from an Xbox to an Atari” in terms of the technology they’re allowed to use:

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.
[…]
One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even 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, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

According to the Post, many employees ended up using their own cell phones on the first day because they didn’t have office phones yet, and that “they set up Gmail accounts, with approval from the White House counsel, so they could send information in more than one way.”

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