Whitehouse.gov

Mike Turk and Dave Winer discuss the new Whitehouse.gov website, each concluding that it looks good but has the potential to be much better. Winer writes...

The new whitehouse.gov is a nice looking site, it's centered around a blog. They promise lots of media, podcasts, videos, etc. In 2001 or 2004 even, it would have been a wonderful breakthrough and I would be singing its praise. But this is 2009, and we know so much more about the web.

Perhaps they're right, and the site can become more than it is now.  I'm eager to see what the brilliant people working on Obama's web team will do over the next few years.

However, we're going to have to adjust our expectations. 

There are just too many perverse incentives for a political office, contradictory incentives among the bureaucrats and officials and prohibitory rules within the bureaucracy for a government website to be too innovative.  The Obama team is going to do some remarkable things, but they will be "innovative for government", not "innovative for the internet".

And that's the key.  The Obama team doesn't need to focus on bringing new, cutting edge ideas to the internet.  They need to focus on bringing the government up to speed on the things that are already commonplace for average people on the internet.

Remember, Obama was widely applauded for putting the Democrat's weeky radio address (and eventually the President's weekly radio address) on YouTube...even though putting a speech on YouTube has been quite ordinary for a few years now. 

The new White House web team can do cutting edge work on the internet, but what they really need to do is cutting edge work on the government.  To do that, they'll have to dial their expectations back to around 2005.  We need to remember that these small steps for the internet are major leaps for the government.   And that is success.