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Could we please make it a requirement that the fucking office of the White House be more tech-savvy than a retarded monkey?

It's not just Bush, by the way, this has been a problem for decades:

Two Washington, D.C., watchdog groups, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, have filed suit against the administration in U.S. district court to force the recovery of the e-mails and the establishment of an effective archiving system for electronic communications at the White House. Meredith Fuchs, general counsel for the National Security Archive, said that the problem is not unique to Republicans or to the Bush administration.

"This has been endemic to the White House since my organization sued the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration, and the Clinton White House about their preservation of e-mails," said Fuchs, who attended Tuesday's hearing. "The reality is that society has changed, electronic communications are what we're going to be doing for the foreseeable future, and it's time for the White House to catch up and be responsible."

Of course, it's not like the Bush administration can resist the chance to point out it no longer cares if we know they're bullshitting the American public or not:

Waxman's committee recently made public a 2005 White House study that identified 473 separate days in which no e-mails were saved from various offices within the executive branch.

Last month, however, another White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said, "We have no reason to believe that any e-mails, at all, are missing."

At least have the decency to pretend you think you're telling us the truth. Of course, what do they blame it on? Transitioning from Notes to Exchange:

Theresa Payton, CIO for the White House Office of Administration, said in her prepared statement that the incoming Bush administration transitioned from Lotus Notes to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Exchange over a two-year period from 2002-2004, and that the ARM System established by the previous administration did not work properly with Exchange.

"ARMS was a custom-designed application," Payton testified, "and I understand that it was discovered that it just could not be effectively integrated with Microsoft Exchange."

That, for my less tech-savvy readers, is what we call bullshit. There is no reason why changing email systems means you lose backups, recycle tapes, or lose emails sent from one system or the other. I've done email system transfers, preventing data loss is quite easy, if you do it right, and you plan it out properly. "Planning it properly" is not only a significant problem for the Bush administration, (See "Rumsfeld, Donald", and "Going to war on the cheap"), but endemic to IT projects everywhere, because planning is neither glamourous or easily explained.

It's also abso-fucking-lutely necessary so you don't have these kinds of humongous cockups, but hey, fuck planning, LET'S GET'R DONE!!! Note for the next administration: Larry the Cable Guy is not a fucking infrastructure planning algorithm.

What was lost?

As a result, thousands or even millions of e-mail messages to and from White House officials -- many of them generated during the crucial period in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, in March 2003 -- have proven to be irretrievable. The White House has given various and conflicting responses on the matter of the lost e-mails. In April 2007 White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said at a press conference, "I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost."

This is bigger than the standard inter-party warfare bullshit. Ten, twenty, a hundred years from now, when historians and others attempt to analyze this period of history, they won't be able to, because the crucial documentation is fucking GONE, because of ignorance and stupidity.

I almost don't care who's president, (well, okay, not Huckabee, because magical thinking is only appropriate at a magic show, not running a country, and McCain has pandered away all the respect I once had for him, which in 2000 was considerable.) I just want whomever wins to be technically competent and to base critical IT decisions on best practices for the White House, with an eye on its unique situation in this country.

Compared to the years of critical historical importance lost due to this...incompetence, Nixon's 18 minutes are a rounding error.

Technorati Tags:
Dumb is faster than light, Presidential Elections, Planning, Incompetence

Comments

"Compared to the years of critical historical importance lost due to this...incompetence, Nixon's 18 minutes are a rounding error."

Yeah, we always thought Nixon was as bad as it could get....

What wouldn't you give to have had Nixon back for the last 7 years?

Posted by: Gatesbasher | February 26, 2008 5:50 PM

Can't they just run "repair permissions" on it? :D

Posted by: Fred | February 27, 2008 4:53 AM

Deliberate action is not incompetence. Isn't it amazing that IT JUST SO HAPPENS that the gaps coincide with wrongdoing on the part of this administration.

Damn...they make me pine for the days of Richard M. "Ratfucker" Nixon.

Posted by: BruceJ | February 27, 2008 3:38 PM

I thought this recent post on BBC website might amuse you...
"Confidential US Air Force (USAF) e-mails, some including flight plans for a presidential visit, have been mistakenly sent to a tourism website."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/7277392.stm

-enjoy :-)

Posted by: redpaw | March 9, 2008 3:33 PM

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