(2009-01-21) Changegov Now Whitehouse Gov

ChangeGov now just directs you to whitehouse.gov (White House Gov), which was updated immediately after the inauguration. Its main Social Media aspect is its WebLog.

• actually, contents of change.gov are still there (though comments are frozen everywhere), just the home page nudges you away (but still has a link into the old site at the bottom).

Tim OReilly is thrilled. Dave Winer is underwhelmed: We need the minds of industry, education, health care, government, people from all walks of life, to connect. It doesn't have to be whitehouse.gov, but why not, why wait?... But when it comes to the best ideas of the web, the sign on the President's door says "Please wait" instead of "The fierce urgency of now."... You need the web Mr. President, now, and we need to get in there and do our work.

What will it look like over time?

Update: Evan Ratliff on the many (Red Tape) challenges involved. The Obama team was able to sidestep these kinds of troublesome rules on Change.gov, in part because, as a quasi-governmental site, it's not subject to executive-branch restrictions.... In other words, with everything he's done so far, Obama has been acknowledging feedback but not necessarily heeding it. And that's what we can expect from Obama's plan to post all pending nonemergency legislation online and allow the public to comment for five days before he acts on it. By mid-December, technology advisers were still struggling to determine the best way to implement the idea. The bigger question is, what will it accomplish? Even the system's own architects concede that it's unlikely that online comments and voting will sway the decision to sign or veto.