Data lags on Obama's stylish Web site

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By Jon Ward

It is a point of pride for the Obama administration that they are more technologically advanced than any previous White House, and they say they are using new media to open up government to regular Americans.

But while the five-month old Obama White House Web site has drawn rave reviews for its fresh design and innovation, several experts say it has not moved the White House toward being "the most open and transparent [administration] in history," as new media director Macon Phillips promised on day one.

Information is harder to find on the Obama Web site than it was on the site created and run by the Bush administration, according to Web site experts.

"It doesn't seem to be quite in line with the notion of the pillars of government 2.0 being openness and transparency. It seems just the opposite," said Mark Drapeau, a columnist for Federal Computer Week who writes frequently on the ways that new technologies can be used by the government.

Mr. Drapeau and others said this might be a short-term trend, as the administration has begun a long-term effort to use new technologies to open up the government that could have a big impact on the way the public interacts with the federal bureaucracy and keeps track of its actions.

The biggest difference is that the Bush Web site archived all its information by year, month and day, with a sidebar menu that allowed a user to view virtually all the information from, for example, a day in 2002 -- speech transcripts along with video and audio of the speech, press releases, official statements, nominations, letters to Congress, executive orders -- with three clicks of the mouse.

The same information on the Obama site, however, is spread across various parts of the Web site. The longer ago something happened, the harder it is to find.

"It's lots of PR and not a lot of data," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, who called the site "brochureware."

One former White House Web director for the Bush administration called the overall experience "discombobulated."

"It is confusing to locate specific content and the structure is not intuitive," said David Almacy, a senior vice president for digital public affairs at Edelman.