For those not familiar with what this actually means, a CMS is basically the back-end (not visible to visitors) of a website that allows the administrators (owners) of the site — often non-programmers — to easily organize site navigation and add content designed to appear on the front-end.

For most CMS solutions, the user experience is pretty simple, usually consisting of a password protected login, options for varied user permissions for approval and forms with specific fields based on type of content such as text, photos, audio and video. Once entered and saved, the CMS stores the information in the back-end database and displays the content on the front-end when called up by a site visitor.

In the early days of the Internet, many developers created unique proprietary CMS solutions for their staff and clients to save time and streamline the process of maintaining a timely and relevant site. Today, there are hundreds of options out there to choose from. Check out this list from CMS Matrix.

Open source is basically the idea that code doesn’t have to be authored or owned by one person, group or company but rather by a public community of developers free to collaborate, write code, make updates and help advance newer software versions for all to share and benefit. For a more specific description of open source, let’s go to Wikipedia which is, ironically, a type of open source resource for defintions:

Open source is an approach to the design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical accessibility to a software’s source code. Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, which provided access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.

Before commenting on the recent upgrade, I did want to set the record straight on a couple things regarding the history of WhiteHouse.gov and the previous CMS.

To get a better understanding of the complete background, I spoke with a couple of my former White House colleagues who were federal government employees in the Office of Administration (OA) of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) back during the transition from President Clinton (42) to President Bush (43).

As I have mentioned before, in my opinion, President Clinton is truly the first Internet president, meaning he was the first to launch a White House website. Here’s what WhiteHouse.gov looked like circa November 1995. Not too shabby at the time. Evidently, in the late 90’s, updates to the site were a bit of a chore. They had to be made manually via files copied to tapes, then physically carried between floors to upload them onto the server a few times a day. Typos could mean a little more exercise that day. Toward the very end of President Clinton’s second term, an automated system was put in place but it wasn’t capable of managing an entire new site for the next four to eight years.

In 2000, with the transition to President George W. Bush’s Administration approaching, a few EOP programmers got together to create an internal homegrown Perl based solution designed to manage basic content needs for the new president’s site. Why Perl? Two reasons. First, Perl was a common programming language at the time, generally used for similar projects. Second, out of the other programming options available, those who were actually developing it knew Perl the best!

(Update from a former EOP insider: “It should also be noted that Perl was picked because the Tool started out as an e-mail to web page processing script. The original tool was developed to solve the problem of posting press releases to the web site automatically. On weekends and after hours, there was no IT staff to do it … so the tool was born of that. Perl as handler script to parse e-mail text into an HTML form and post to the web site. Then it just grew and grew… initially it was all about automation. Only during the later years [sic] did it start into more of your standard (term used loosely) CMS.”)

Out of this collaboration, a completely new and unique solution was born which we affectionately (most of the time) called, “The Tool.”

Over time, as newer site versions and features were rolled out on the front-end, the Tool scaled with it and was updated accordingly to support them including many things it wasn’t originally designed to do such as creating on-the-fly printer friendly alternative text pages (508 compliance) and digital image processing.

In March of 2007, we launched a new (and final) version of WhiteHouse.gov under President Bush. However, even with the new design and improved functionality for users, the Tool remained in place on the back-end. It was tweaked and updated, but the foundation was the same. We considered options to deploy a new CMS, but personally I wanted to be a good steward of taxpayer money and didn’t think it was prudent to spend a couple million dollars on something that was only going to be used for a year and a half or so before being shipped off to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in January 2009. As a result, the site continued using the Tool all the way up until Inauguration Day.

Several months prior to Election Day, and in a very similar scenario to the Clinton-Bush transition preparation in 2000, career federal employess in EOP’s OA division gathered to begin planning for the next president’s website — whether for Sen. McCain or Sen. Obama, nobody knew. They initiated a review of the most effificient, secure CMS solutions. After the completion of the thoughtful, competitive procurement process, General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) was awarded the contract and immediately began work on a new CMS for the 44th President of the United States.

Many stories have reported that President Obama’s team inherited an “old proprietary CMS which has been used by WhiteHouse.gov since the Bush Administration” built and executed by GDIT. However, that isn’t true. As I mentioned earlier, President Bush’s website, CMS Tool and all, was taken offline at 12:00 PM ET on January 20, 2009, President Obama’s Inauguration Day, and ultimately sent to NARA.

President George W. Bush is the first digital president, meaning that he is the first to have his entire presidency captured online via WhiteHouse.gov in the form of transcripts, photos, video and audio. However, Web 2.0 and social media was just gearing up around the time I left the White House in May 2007.

Clearly, the campaign had a huge impact on the growth of the Internet through social media and rapid programming advancements (WordPress 2.8.5 is now available already? I just upgraded to 2.8.4 two weeks ago!) but many of the tools that are being used today either weren’t available to us or hadn’t been tested or matured to the point that we could utilize them effectively within the E-Gov guidelines, privacy policies, security procedures and budgetary limitations that often presented challenges.

To put it in perspective, from 2005-2007, MySpace was the most popular social network, Facebook was locked down to only college students with .edu email addresses, YouTube had recently been purchased by Google but was still growing and Twitter had just launched in March 2007 at SXSW in Austin.

There’s no question that the increased adoption of open source backend solutions in the private sector, and now in government, represents yet another evolutionary step in the rapid growth of the Internet. As these tools become more prevalent, users will be able to better connect and collaborate on shared platforms which only improves the potential for digital public engagement in shaping our democracy.

Congrats to the entire White House new media team!

Want to give it a try? You can actually demo Drupal yourself (and many other open source solutions) courtesy of opensourceCMS.com or you could save yourself some time and just go hire the best in the business!

MEDIA

Podcast: The Right Doctor with David Almacy

(Dr. Melissa Clouthier, The Right Doctor, 11/05/09)

WhiteHouse.gov goes Drupal (techPresident, 10/24/09)

RELATED

White House opens Web site programming to public (Associated Press)

Before Drupal, There Was “The Tool” (techPresident, 10/30/09)

For Drupal Enterprise Software in White House, It’s One Step Forward, One Step Back (IT Business Edge)

Whitehouse.gov could be a springboard for Open Source for America (InfoWorld)

WhiteHouse.gov on Drupal: A skeptic weighs in (OhMyGov)

Whitehouse using Drupal? (Drupal News)

The Internet is certainly playing a key role. In fact, YouTube may have officially reached its digital advocacy “tipping point” when a handful of videos were recently uploaded featuring flustered politicians struggling to answer tough healthcare questions during several Congressional town hall meetings.

Many Democrats in support of the bill have moved to characterize opponents as an organized, astroturfing, angry right wing mob. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) even went so far as to call the protests “un-American.” On the contrary, it was the SEIU who was caught on tape beating a black conservative who voiced dissent over the plan.

However, this wasn’t an organized gotcha campaign tactic like the infamous “Macaca” incident that many credit for the derailment of Sen. Allen’s re-election campaign in Virginia. Rather, these videos were shot, edited and posted by average, passionate American citizens who gathered to exercise their First Amendment right and demonstrate their concern over President Obama’s proposed healthcare legislation.

As Congress heads into their summer recess, some Members may wish they were spending more time on the beach instead of answering questions from frustrated constituents about government-run universal healthcare. I say let them vacation. After all, it will give them time to actually read the 1,000 page bill, perfect for a little summer reading.

In the midst of all this debate, the Internet continues to ramp up full throttle on both sides of the issue.

The Obama White House is attempting to utilize the Web, just as they did so masterfully during the campaign, in an effort to push the legislation through. How? Well, for starters, Linda Douglass took on the Drudge Report and asks users to “snitch” on fellow citizens if they see “fishy” information online about the healthcare discussion. They even set up an email address (flag@whitehouse.gov) to ease the reporting process.

The primary issue I have with this approach is that the White House Website is taxpayer funded and shouldn’t be used as a tool to gather information about Americans for pure political gain. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) agrees and promptly sent a letter to the White House asking President Obama to bring the program to an end.

If the DNC or BarackObama.com/Organizing for America wants to do this (i.e. Tweet Your Senator = brilliant way to build buzz and your E-mail lists!), fine by me. However, WhiteHouse.gov should steer clear especially when the data collected is not subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and new questions are arising about federal government privacy policies.

Is there a double standard here? Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino makes an excellent point in Politico’s Arena:

“What would have happened if President George W. Bush had asked Americans to forward to the White House emails they’d received that spread “disinformation” or seemed “fishy” regarding any topic, such as the war on terror, immigration reform, tax cuts? How soon would the New York Times have splashed it on the front page, that moveon.org would have flipped its lid, and the Congressional Democrats called for new legislation to strip the President of his wildly expanding powers?”

Just today, WhiteHouse.gov launched a new “Health Insurance Reform Reality Check” feature which offers “facts about the stability and security you get from health insurance reform.”

Those at the National ObamaCare Opt Out (NOOO!) Registry disagree and have launched a site designed to motivate opponents of the bill to join the fight against it by registering and tweeting out with the #optout hashtag on Twitter.

I was recently reminded of the Internet’s infancy about a month ago when Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) appeared on FOX News with Megyn Kelly to discuss H.R. 615. The resolution would require Members of Congress who vote for public option healthcare to give up their current federal employee healthcare plan (as currently written, those serving House and Senate are exempt for five years). While on the program, Rep. Fleming encouraged viewers to visit his Website fleming.house.gov to track the bill’s cosponsors – all Republicans at the time. Interest was so great that increased traffic crashed the server for almost 45 minutes resulting in a 403.9 Error: Too Much Democracy All At Once!

Instead of using some of the more traditional methods, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) chose to outline his thoughts regarding healthcare reform via a video he posted on Facebook. Of course, I learned about this during a talk radio interview with the congressman as I drove into work one morning last week. See, MSM isn’t dead!

As the showdown continues to heat up after the break, one thing is for sure: This is fight is real and the implications are huge. Since Inauguration, many have wondered if Obama would be able to leverage his online campaign supporters into governing once he transitioned to the Oval Office. I think we are about to find out.

UPDATE

Megyn Kelly discusses healthcare “flag” email lists and the Presidential Records Act with Deputy White House Press Secretary Bill Burton on FOX News. (Politico.com, 8/12/09)

‘Omnipotent Clarity’
At last Thursday’s (8/13/09) press briefing, Major Garrett of FOX News asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about many who claim to have received unsolicited healthcare related emails from David Axelrod at the White House.

On Sunday, 8/15/09, Nick Shapiro, White House spokesman for New Media released the following statement, with a follow-up posted on the FOX News White House blog, Row 2, Seat 4:

The White House email list is made up of email addresses obtained solely through the White House website. The White House doesn’t purchase, upload or merge from any other list, again, all emails come from the White House website as we have no interest in emailing anyone who does not want to receive an email. If an individual received the email because someone else or a group signed them up or forwarded the email, we hope they were not too inconvenienced. Further, we suggest that they unsubscribe from the list by clicking the link at the bottom of the email or tell whomever forwarded it to them not to forward such information anymore. We are implementing measures to make subscribing to emails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual’s behalf.”

Related

White House will change e-mail rules (Politico, 8/16/09)

White House Passes Blame on Unsolicited Health Care E-Mails (FOXNews.com, 8/16/09) The White House suggests third-party groups are to blame for unsolicited health care e-mails.

ACLU – Apologists for Obama? (Scott Stanzel)

Remember when protest was patriotic? (Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Washington Examiner)

Obama’s Authoritarian Style (Wall Street Journal)

Cartoon: Get Out of the Way (John Trever, The Albuquerque Journal)

The group includes Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org; Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum; Ellen Miller from the Sunlight Foundation; Jon Henke, a consultant and blogger for The Next Right; and David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Due to the overwhelming response to the first column, Jose decided to add a guest reviewer for “Grading WhiteHouse.gov, Round Two,” which was posted earlier this week — and I was honored that he thought of me. Of course, he did indicate that he wasn’t going to be able to print my entire thoughts, but agreed to allow me to post them here.

However, a few things to note before we start:

• The transition was absolutely flawless. President Bush’s site was archived and President Obama’s new site was officially launched on Inauguration Day right on time. I don’t think many truly recognize what a major accomplishment that was.
• It’s important to recognize that the Internet is still relaltively in its infancy and that social media is just a few years old. When I was at the White House, MySpace was all the rage, Facebook was still limited those in college with .edu email addresses and Twitter hadn’t officially launched yet. Today, many are still trying to figure out what it means for business, the media and yes, even for our democracy.
• The Obama White House new media team, led by Macon Phillips, has only been in place a short time so let’s give them some room to settle in. They join a small fraternity of White House Internet staffers who came before them that built the foundation for what they will ultimately achieve. They are breaking new ground, trying new things and will certainly make some mistakes along the way. As ttechnology and tools continue to improve, I know that they’ll get there, but it will just take time so let’s be patient. However, there some basic things that seem to be missing, some of which are discussed in more detail below.
• I originally wrote this in late April just before the official 100 day mark — and about a week before the White House officially launched a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. The first Obama White House email (on Health Care) just came out yesterday.
• These comments and opinions are purely my own and I’m very interested in your feedback. Feel free to weigh in at the bottom of the post.

So, in the spirit of transparency, the full transcript is provided below for your review.

Q: How would you define transparency? Accessiblity? Engagement?
There’s a whole lot of buzz about transparency these days, but I believe that there’s a lack of common understanding as to what it really means and how it should apply to the process of governing online.

In my opinion, the word “transparency” as it relates to government represents the ability for citizens to gain easy access to information surrounding the decisions and public activities of our elected officials. Clearly the Internet has assisted with this. People have more information available to them than ever before and this is one of the primary reasons why I refer to President Bush as the first “digital president” despite the fact that President Clinton was the first to launch a White House site. In the same way, President Obama will certainly build upon this progress as the Internet continues to expand.

However, most would agree that complete transparency for every communication, no matter how large or small, between federal employees poses unique challenges of its own, especially in our fast-paced, technology driven world.

Despite the sheer volume of content, privacy concerns, national security protections and political sensitivities, there are some technological hurdles, as well. For example, content must be universal to ensure that everyone can consume information equally including those without regular access to the Internet, on slower connections or using outdated equipment, browsers and plug-ins.

In addition, Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires that content on federal government Websites must be made available in different formats for those who may be hearing or sight impaired. There have been major strides in this area, including closed captioning options in YouTube, readable PDFs, audio/video tagging and other web-based software innovations which have leveled the playing field, most of which either didn’t exist, were restricted or too cost prohibitive to employ just a couple years ago.

Conversations that used to be one-way and constrained to “walled-gardens” on a handful of specific sites are a thing of the past thanks to social media. Now, when the White House publishes information, there is no shortage of online outlets where those issues can be discussed including social networks, news sites and blogs. The big question that still remains is whether the White House will use the Web to engage and better connect with citizens.

We saw the beginning stages of this under Jimmy Orr’s leadership (my predecessor) with the launch of “Ask the White House” in April 2003. By January 2009, the White House had hosted over 400 online chats via ATWH with officials from all areas and disciplines within the federal government, including one with President Bush aboard Air Force One in January 2008 on return from a Middle East trip.

President Obama broke similar ground with his “Open for Questions” event. Essentially, this was a standard live Webcast from the East Room where a handful of questions submitted via WhiteHouse.gov were answered in front of a pre-screened invited audience. It was reported that over 10,000 questions were sent in and I am hopeful that there will be many future opportunities to have those addressed in the coming months, as well, including live questions randomly selected from those who may wish to connect to the White House via real time video streaming technology such as Qik, Ustream or Skype.

Q: In your mind, what’s the mission of WhiteHouse.gov?
During White House events, President Bush often welcomed guests to the “people’s house” and I always viewed the Website in the same manner: WhiteHouse.gov is the people’s site — and it is one of a kind. Sure, other world leaders have similar sites but WhiteHouse.gov is the one place that users should be able to go to answer one simple Twitter-like question, “What is the president doing?”

I believe every American should have access to the activities of our president on any given day. For those looking beyond the sound bite to learn more about what is said and done on their behalf, the site serves an important role as a digital archive for unedited transcripts, photos, audio and long-form video of public events and press briefings.

In addition, WhiteHouse.gov should be a place where one can find more information about the president’s positions on current policy issues, as well as historical information about the American Presidency, the White House and the United States.

Q: What has surprised you most about Obama’s WhiteHouse.gov?
I was very impressed by the speed and efficiency of the transition when the White House team successfully managed the transfer and archival of President Bush’s site (including related multimedia) while simultaneously launching President Obama’s new version at 12:01 PM on Inauguration Day.

Load times are fast and the design is clean, crisp and modern. I am a fan of the rotating features which helps the user navigate the site based on relevant and timely issues. As an E-Gov evangelist, I was very pleased that President Obama chose to answer questions from WhiteHouse.gov for the East Room Webcast and the implementation of Google Moderator to manage the process was smooth and seamless. Also, the White House LiveStream has worked quite well since its launch. I specifically enjoyed watching the multi-stream coverage of the meetings on healthcare, as well as the continued tradition of the White House Easter Egg Roll Webcast.

Q: What has disappointed you the most?
As we know, this week marks 100 days since President Obama officially took office, (originally written in late April) so it is fitting to take a step back to examine some of the areas where the site still needs improvement now that his team has a few months under their belt.

My biggest disappointment with the new site is the difficulty I have in locating information due to poor organization architecture. It is confusing to locate specific content and the structure is not intuitive. So much emphasis is placed on the blog that, unfortunately, related materials such as transcripts, photos, audio, video and links get lost, are buried or seem to be posted as an afterthought in separate, unrelated locations.

For example, the March 24, 2009 press conference was posted on the blog as, “Addressing Our Problems Head-On” and only included President Obama’s answer to a tough question posed by CNN’s Ed Henry which many thought was a highlight. The next morning, I still couldn’t find a transcript or video and when a link finally did appear a few hours later, it sent users to the Los Angeles Times blog. I’m sure the LA Times executives (and the blog’s advertisers) appreciate the increased site traffic from a taxpayer funded site, but shouldn’t WhiteHouse.gov – and ultimately the National Archives – be the permanent source for that information? What happens if the LA Times moves the transcript or starts charging for archived content on their site? In all fairness, I did eventually find the transcript a day or so later after several attempts via the search engine, but it wasn’t easy.

This isn’t an isolated situation. Since I couldn’t find a daily listing of presidential activities, I went to the Speeches section of WhiteHouse.gov under “The Briefing Room” and found only three (one in Spanish) currently listed. At the time of this post, the most recent listed is from 2/27/2009, “Remarks of President Barack Obama – Responsibly Ending the War in Iraq.”

Similarly, it is unclear as to how the items listed in Official Statements differ from speeches which have remarks mixed in with written statements from President Obama, Mrs. Obama and Vice President Biden – which are all separate from Presidential Actions such as executive orders, proclamations, etc.

Q: As it stands, what grade would you give the site? And give your one paragraph explanation.
Although the new WhiteHouse.gov has an attractive, modern design and a number of new features, it is still in its infancy and it is important to remember that. However, in some ways, the site seems to actually have less content than its immediate predecessor.

Simple things that were standard on President Bush’s Website such as daily press briefing video (which is on YouTube now, but not embedded or otherwise available on WhiteHouse.gov), Cabinet member photos and bios and RSS feeds for all remarks, weekly addresses, briefings and other releases (not just selected items) all seem to be missing. Given this, combined with the site’s organizational challenges, delayed postings and hard to find information, I have to give it a current grade of: C

I am confident that the Obama team will eventually fix these issues and ultimately take WhiteHouse.gov to the next level as the Internet also continues to grow and evolve. More importantly, users will help shape the site’s future by expecting the White House to add new functionality by providing more data, finding ways to incorporate social media, offering mobile versions of the site, adding text messaging and soliciting feedback from citizens on important legislation, thus improving the transparency of, access to and engagement with their government.

Related

Grading WhiteHouse.gov, Round Two (Jose Antonio Vargas, The Washington Post)

Grading Whitehouse.gov, Part 2 (Jon Henke, The Next Right)

Your Government & New Media (Macon Phillips, The White House)

On Day 2, I had the pleasure of participating on the Morning Plenary panel sponsored by Politico entitled, “White House 2.0.”  We discussed how the Internet, which has been so prevalent in the current presidiential race, will possibly change how a future Administration will govern.

The panel, moderated by Ari Schwartz, Center for Democracy and Technology included Sunlight Foundation Executive Director Ellen Miller, former Congressman Rick White of the Wood Bay Group and Tom Steinberg from the UK’s mySociety.org.

It was a very lively discussion where a number of innovative ideas for citizen activist and engagement websites were shared - but, in my opinion, most would be best managed outside the official dot gov arena.  There are a number of current restrictions and regulations that govern federal government sites that may provide some barriers to participation. 

For example, there are rules prohibiting federal government sites from linking to or publishing content on external sites other than .gov or .mil, concerns about info collected by agency sites while protecting user privacy, and compliance with Section 508 which requires dot gov sites to provide content in alternative formats for those who are sight or hearing impaired.  All certainly have merit, but these are rules that non-gov sites don’t have to adhere to which may create challenges when attempting to apply universal standards for digital dissemination.  Bottom line: policies will have to be changed in order to adapt to the growing and everchanging online landscape.

However, at the root of the issue seemed to be a general lack of familiarity of the purpose of “dot gov” sites.   I was surprised to hear one of the panelists characterize federal sites as nothing but a useless repository of government brochureware and press releases.  Not only is that statement incredibly unfair, it’s entirely at odds with the facts.

Of course, sites do serve the important function of communicating with the public on policy initiatives and agency news but many dot gov’s offer so much more, with new functionality being added every day by a myriad of hard working, dedicated public servants.

A few examples:

• The Education Department uses ED.gov to connect teachers from across the country to share lesson plans, best practices and provide training via the Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative.
• The Small Business Administration offers over 25 online training courses on SBA.gov for those interested in learning more about how to start, manage or advertise their business.
• The National Institutes of Health solicited feedback via NIH.gov in an effort enhance and improve the effectiveness of their peer review system.
• USA.gov, managed by the General Services Administration, is a wealth of information and offers over 100 government services accessible online.  

It is important to note that the Internet is still in it’s relative infancy when compared to other communication innovations like the telephone or TV.  When President Bush was elected in 2000, iPods, YouTube, Facebook, and Smartphones didn’t exist and most were still accessing the Internet via dial-up.

There is always room for improvement but, in my opinion, the Bush Administration has not been given due credit for the E-Gov advancements that have been made over the past seven years. A full list of all 24 Presidential E-Gov Initiatives may be found on the Office of Management and Budget’s eGov site located at egov.gov.

There has been some real progress indeed, including the move to paperless documents which travel electronically on a digital infrastructure built during President Bush’s time in office.  For the first time ever, a document was digitally transmitted from the Executive Branch to the Legislative Branch when the President submitted his FY09 eBudget eariler this month. It was digitally signed by the White House Executive Clerk with an unique authentication code which was successfully validated once it reached Capitol Hill.  Not only does this process increase efficiency, it also saves trees, time and resources.  As a result, GPO and GAO both announced that they were moving toward the paperless route, as well.

So, regardless of one’s party or personal politics – I am excited and anxious to see how the next President will build on the successes of our current one.  Especially since the candidates had to campaign so effectively online, they will definitely be expected to govern there in the same manner. 

Related

Wanted: A More Digital Congress  (NY Times Political Blog: The Caucus)

White House 2.0  (TechRepublican)

Politics Online Day 2: Morning Roundup  (Capitol Valley)

Politics Online Conference Day 2 – Morning Plenary  (The Spewker)

White House 2.0  (CDT: PolicyBeta)