TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

If you've been reading the coverage of the Obama Administration's Web roll-out, you must have noticed the small cottage industry of bloggers and reporters tracking changes on WhiteHouse.gov, Recovery.gov and the many, many other Web sites the Obama Administration has launched within a month of taking office. It seems that people are interested in every video posted, every word altered and every campaign promise that is cast aside. However, like so many of our less rigorous activities, this is another task that is best handled with technology.

Journalism non-profit ProPublica last week launched ChangeTracker, which will track all changes on WhiteHouse.gov, Recovery.gov and financialstability.gov. By following the site's feed and clicking the links, you can instantly compare the before and after of every executive order, speech or blog post that is uploaded to the site. Perhaps more interesting will be what's deleted; I blogged in Novermber about the turmoil surrounding the disappearance of detailed policy statements from Change.gov. Hopefully the administration has learned from the episode. No matter how quickly you remove or alter something posted to the sites, it pays to remember that someone is always watching.