I had written a blog post a little more than a year ago called President 2.0, concerning Candidate Obama's superior internet strategy, which translated into some advantage at the voting booth. As a candidate, Obama made extensive use of social media, including Twitter, RSS, wiki pages and Facebook, and with tools and methods like these, his campaign team was able to be more nimble, communicate more effectively, and ensure that voters were more intimate with issues.

 

More recently, the Administration has made another significant technological stride forward, moving its website platform to the Drupal CMS. This move is significant, even symbolic, as it represents an administration that is making a demonstrable effort to govern in a more transparent way, allowing the public to participate and collaborate in the government in a way that hasn't been possible until now. Further, because Drupal is modular, scalable and supported by an immense community of global developers, the new www.WhiteHouse.gov site can be updated quickly and efficiently to meet changing public needs. This also translates into a more robust system that costs much less to maintain. In many ways, the website platform itself is consistent with the promise of the Administration and its particular view of how government should behave.

The following video clip is from the November 2009 DC Drupal Meetup, and includes leaders from the White House New Media team. Check it out.

White House New Media Team on Using Drupal from Development Seed on Vimeo.