E-mail is near and dear to Barack Obama (thus his reliance on his Blackberry). But when Obama’s incoming staff members first enter the White House on Inauguration Day, they won’t yet have access to the traditional White House e-mail system. According to The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney, being out of the loop for even a few hours is just not acceptable for the tech-savvy Obama crowd. So the administration has turned to Google. No, it didn’t tap Google’s Eric Schmidt to fix the problem. Instead, it issued its staffers Google Gmail accounts to bridge the gap.
In a press release, the Obama Presidential Transition office stated:
“Because the Presidential Transition office will be closing before our press department has access to e-mail addresses in the White House, we ask for your patience as there will be a period of time tomorrow when it will be a bit more difficult to receive information and to contact us. To that end, we have created interim e-mail addresses where you will be able to email us, which can be found below.”
The new addresses pattern is wh.LASTNAME@gmail.com. Eventually, once they get situated, the team will revert to the traditional White House e-mail (@who.eop.gov). But for a while at least, Google’s free Web mail will be the official way to reach the 44th President of the United States. Send him a note at wh.obama@gmail.com.
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