Regardless of my political affiliation, as a technologist I’ve been watching with interest as President-elect Barack Obama reveals some ideas about how bring aspects of the technology his campaign used so successfully into the executive office.

I’m impressed how quickly change.gov was released to publish transition information online. Obama plans to hire a national Chief Technology Officer which has caused quite a flutter among the Silicon Valley crowd and stimulated a lot of interesting ideas like opening select government data via standard APIs. And in one of the clearer signs we’re moving into a postmodern presidency, the weekly presidential radio address will also be broadcast on YouTube.

Notably, the potential for new technology to change politics is bi-partisan. Members the Republican party launched their own site to organize opinion and increase activism.

With the air abuzz with technology talk in Washington, it surprised me a bit to learn in the New York Times today that when Barack Obama is sworn into office, he’ll likely lose the ability to communicate via email “because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.”

I certainly understand these concerns but find the notion of a President cut off from email disappointing. The email archiving controversy that plagued the current administration does underscore the risks of using email, but also points out the fact that the Oval Office badly needs a robust, secure, and compliant email infrastructure. Instead of fearing email, I would like to see the incoming administration propose some improvements and safeguards for email in Washington as part of the technology policy the proposed national CTO will responsible for developing and deploying.

I feel bad the President-elect may have to give up his Blackberry for another reason. Shouldn’t the person who holds one of the most difficult jobs in the world be entitled to play a quick round of Brick Breaker every now and then?  Hmmm, on second thought…

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 at 9:51 am and is filed under Commentary, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.