White House Gets Low Marks Online
From NationalJournal.com's David Herbert...
Barack Obama's presidential campaign was an online juggernaut, and the new administration has proposed to use that technological wizardry to make government more transparent. But while new media observers give the team's two most ambitious Web sites -- the overhaul of WhiteHouse.gov and the stimulus-tracking Recovery.gov -- an "A" for effort, the consensus is that Obama's online efforts have a long way to go in the next 100 days. In a recent poll by NationalJournal.com, new media experts from across the political spectrum gave WhiteHouse.gov an average grade of C+.
Although they mostly saw the site as an improvement from the previous administration's, many noted that it remained a one-way forum and suggested it be opened to allow comments and make greater use of the "Open for Questions" feature. "This occasional use of interactive tools" is impressive, says Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation. But "90 percent of the time the site is pretty straightforward, as it was under [George W.] Bush." Recovery.gov fared even worse in our poll, averaging a C. The most common gripe about the site, which was designed to track stimulus projects, is that it's "the view from 30,000 feet," as Micah Sifry, co-founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, put it. Read the full story here.
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