Gibbs: White House Email System Is Broken (VIDEO)

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, during an hour long press conference today, admitted that he is unable to send out a "week ahead" memo to the press core because he's having trouble with the White House email system: namely, it's broken.

Wired has a great article noting that the "White House tech is more tired than wired." Obama spokesman Bill Burton remarked, "It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari."

Watch Gibbs lament the broken email system below.

Comments

[MrHacks]

Goodbye Dark Ages!

How BushCo managed to keep the ship from sinking is a miracle. Although, it didn't help shooting holes in the bottom of the hull.

If anything, the government needs to endorse using Blackberrys and Gmail and all this high tech stuff. It is just pathetic that we didn't bother upgrading any of this during the Bush presidency, but then again, BushCo is in the business of being Iron Mongers.

Why speak peace with foreign diplomats on the Internet when a war could be waged?

I woun't be at all surprized if they used a giant PDP-10 computers with a game called Thermo Nuclear War. Fortunately, the past admistration didn't have anyone computer literate enough to operate the machines..­.and that is what they were afraid of. Using the computer in general!

Hopefully this adminstration won't make the same dumb mistaktes that the last adminstration did with computers.­..like use LAPTOPS to store secure information. (No way thoses will ever be stollen.)

The Computer Nerds are here to fix this mess. And it is a BIG mess. We are going to need more than a few pizzas and beers for compensation.

[johnfranks999]

Outages, data breaches, and ineffective "solutions" are on the rise. Price Waterhouse Cooper and Carnegie-Mellon’s CyLab have recent surveys that show the senior executive class to be lacking in understanding regarding IT risk and its tie to overall enterprise (business) risk - and the White House will be no exception, as evidenced here. Data breaches and outages are due to a lagging business culture – and people aren’t getting the training they need. For example: Microsoft patched for the worm affecting Heartland (and credit card processing) 4 months ago. As CIO, I seek things that work, in hopes that good ideas make their way back to me - check your local library: A book that is required reading is "I.T. WARS: Managing the Business-Technology Weave in the New Millennium­."
The author, David Scott, has an interview that is a great exposure: http://businessforum.com/DScott_02.html -
The book came to us as a tip from an intern who attended a course at University of Wisconsin, where the book is an MBA text. It has helped us to understand that, while various systems of security are important, no system can overcome laxity, ignorance, or deliberate intent to harm. Necessary is a sustained culture and awareness; an efficient prism through which every activity is viewed from a security perspective prior to action.
In the realm of risk, unmanaged possibilities become probabilities – read the book BEFORE you suffer a bad outcome – or propagate one.

[Nikola Tesla]

Once you go Mac, you never go back.

[PippiLongstocking]

Gibbs is secretly my boyfriend but he just doesn't know it yet.

[AudsMom]

I love Robert Gibbs. I wish I could sit and watch him work everyday.

[jacqmac]

I can testify to the White House system having problems. I've been trying for TWO DAYS to send a comment about the Economic Recovery Bill to the President. My message is never sent because my email is 'invalid' or so says the annoying pop up message after I hit send! I'll have to route my messages through Change.gov or OrgainzeforAmerica.org until this gets cleaned up. However, I know that the Smithsonian probably has a couple of 'antique' TYPEWRITERS around--just one hard copy of the weekly agenda plus a copy machine could probably alleviate this problem.
I fail to see why everyone is picking on Gibbs--he's refreshingly honest and forthcoming. This MIGHT APPEAR to be an act--but after the last eight years of absolute NOTHING of substance coming from the last Administration and its pantheon of 'mouthpieces', including Scot McClellan, THIS GUY is positively WONDERFUL!

[chevyval]

It's because Mercury is retrograde.

[Al23]

I'm an IT tech with about 20 years experience in a fairly large shop (about 2500 desktops and 300 servers.) That the White House is running XP is really not surprising. Like about 98% of all offices they've rejected Vista. XP is not flashy, but it works. As far as going to Macs, maybe. If you want to put VMware fusion on your Mac and run XP from within your OS, cool. As much as I respect Macs, many, many more apps are available to run on XP.

[Nikola Tesla]

Of course XP runs faster on a Intel Mac.

[earlygrayce1]

i believe him. he went to Auburn. War Eagle Robert!
but don't expect me not to recognize your spin when something that was this administration's fault, eventually happens.
i know it's your job. just wanted to show some AU love in these tough football times. Go CARDS!

[karela]

Hopefully, the email thing is broken badly enough that they can get some modern equipment!

[prider]

Bless you, HP: You demonstrate that copyeditors are still needed. On line 5, it should be "press corps" [not press core].

[MaxChampion]

"the press core"?

[micmac]

Sounds like the Obama admin needs a few more days to get it together.

[karela]

Sounds like the White House needs a computer system that isn't six years old. They'll have to replace it sometime. It surely won't last for another eight years. Why not join this millennium now instead of later? A computer system of that age is not the one that should be running the country. Even I can do better than that.

[libsechumanist]

The Obama Administration needs to get it together? Please. The last administration was full of techno phobes to the point that they couldn't upgrade their e-mail system. Oh, scary - SCIENCE! TECHNOLOGY! Pathetic. My personal iBook can do more. The system the last admin has been using is akin to two cans and a string, to quote Keith O - that's not President Obama's fault.

[Nikola Tesla]

As opposed to the last Administration that conveniently lost YEARS of e-mails.

[DogTown]

Someone tie Robert's tie for him it's always so crooked...­It drives me crazy!

[Rapid Ray]

That's oaky...

At least the "refresh buttons" still work. Proof is the lack of George Bush...