The Changed Whitehouse.Gov: First Impressions

Barack Obama’s new Whitehouse.gov website was up and running at 12:01 pm on Tuesday, and it represents quite a change from George Bush’s stodgy and outdated version. Instead of the traditional three-column layout, the top of the home page is dominated by the big message – change has come to America – and big pictures of the inauguration. Underneath are six columns of links, including standards such the White House, the Administration, and the Government. But the full policy agenda is there, as well as the briefing room and blog, and a contact link. Contact will be handled by a new Office of Public Liaison, which is tasked with stimulating dialogue between the Administration and the public. When you visit any page on the site, a right side bar pops up with links to the blog and the Office of Public Liaison (as well as history such as a slideshow with portraits of all Obama’s predecessors.) We’re also told that the President’s weekly address will be available on video, continuing the practice established in the transition period.

The unanswered question is how dialogue will be handled. The transition period website, change.gov, freely hosted thousands of comments organized around such topics as the citizen’s briefing book (125,000 users submitting 44,000 ideas), open for questions (104,000 users submitting 76,000 questions), and join the discussion (4200 comments). The Citizen’s Briefing book has now wrapped up and comments have been disabled on join the discussion. It appears that some parts of the change.gov, such as some topics under the blog, are still open for comment.

As best I can guess, the Obama Administration would like to transfer the dialogue from change.gov to whitehouse.gov, and handle it through the Office of Public Liaison. That hasn’t happened yet, and the commenters and participants are anxious that it does. Obama has raised great expectations about transparency and openness in government, and we are all waiting to see what he will deliver. The old cynic, Sir Humphrey Appleby, said that you can have either openness or you can have government. But that was before the Internet. Stay tuned.