Whitehouse.gov was relaunched today on the Open Source Drupal. This is a groundbreaking move that will allow people across the world to monitor and contribute to the code that Whitehouse.gov is built on.
“We now have a technology platform to get more and more voices on the site,” White House new media director Macon Phillips told The Associated Press hours before the new site went live on Saturday. “This is state-of-the-art technology and the government is a participant in it.”
“Security is fundamentally built into the development process because the community is made up of people from all across the world, and they look at the source code from the very start of the process until it’s deployed and after,” said Terri Molini of Open Source for America, an interest group that has pushed for more such programs.
You won’t notice any change to the look or feel of the site, the only noticeable change will be for developers looking at the foundation of the site. One can only assume that other government sites will eventually follow in Whitehouse.gov’s footprints.
This is a truly exciting announcement and a huge step forward for new media in politics. Kudos to Macon Phillips and the Obama administration on changing the face of how information will be used by the government in years to come.
I recently finished up some consulting for a large data enterprise corporation and was shocked to see how outdated and clunky their CMS tools were.
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