Grading Whitehouse.gov, Part 2

The second edition of the Washington Post's Grading Whitehouse.gov series is up.  The panel includes David Weinberger, Ellen Miller, Craig Newmark, Andrew Rasiej, David Almacy and myself.  Our bottom line...

The group's average grade on first assessment in March was a C+, far from the mostly glowing early reviews of the Obama administration. As one of the graders summed up, Obama's WhiteHouse.gov "still has a long way to go to meet the expectations that the President himself set during the campaign."

In this second report card, the site's grades range from C to A-, with the average grade rising to a solid B.

More of our comments are contained in the story.  My own grade and response were based not on the technical and design aspects of the site (which, as far as I can tell, are excellent), but on their success in achieving the substantive transparency, accessibility and engagement goals.  I genuinely believe the people involved want to do that, though I also think it will be difficult for reasons mostly outside their control.  Still, though it probably won't get me invited to the White House Christmas Party, I think that is the standard against which Whitehouse.gov should be evaluated. Here is the response I gave Jose Antonio Vargas.

Grade: C

I'm going to judge Whitehouse.gov against what they can become.  They have made good progress - the design and features are solid, and their use of outside tools has been groundbreaking for government.

However, their accomplishments have been more technical than cultural. Bringing genuine transparency to Whitehouse.gov will be a monumental task.  The blog has made some real progress towards giving us some insight into what's happening in the White House.  The White House online Town Hall was an interesting experiment.  They deserve kudos for being willing to address crowdsourced questions.  It is a good first step towards more authentic public interaction with the White House.

On the other hand, it's been around 2 months since Presidential speech transcripts and appointments have been updated.  I'm pretty sure Obama has given a speech since February 27th, and he's made plenty of appointments since February 12th.  So why are the transcripts and appointments not updated the same day?

More importantly, as Cato's Jim Harper has pointed out, Whitehouse.gov seems to be breaking Obama's campaign promise not to sign any non-emergency legislation until we've been given an opportunity on the Whitehouse.gov website to read and comment on the bill for 5 days.  That suggests a troubling lack of commitment to transparency.

At TechPresident, Nancy Scola offers a good summary:

On the plus side, the Obama White House's web operation is moving into "advanced" level web work with gusto. In a little more than three months, they've expanded what's expected from a presidential administration to include interactivity like online town halls, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blog posts from a range of administration officials.

But the White House is losing points for completeness. Getting lost in the process is a strong grasp of the basic ABCs of government web work. The daily tedium of press briefings and presidential remarks and details on planned events has often slipped through the cracks on WhiteHouse.gov. That record-keeping might not be sexy. It is, though, a box that a modern presidential administration needs to vigorously check first before moving on to far more fun and attention-grabbing online experimentation.