Thursday, January 22, 2009

POLITICS - Talk About CHANGE!

The following is an excerpt of the transcript from the Newshour (PBS)

"Change Comes Quickly to the White House Web Site"

Obama wants to keep Blackberry

RAY SUAREZ: The transition team has posted video of policy team meetings. And with an eye toward moving the entire government toward better use of digital technology, the new administration is expected to name a chief technology officer, a newly created position, in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, they're throwing out ideas for new uses of the Internet, including connecting supporters to various forms of service and activism in their own communities.

One recent example: the Obama Web site raised money for the victims of the Southern California fires.

Some who logged on during the campaign now have high hopes for continuing the connection.

RON STEVENS, Obama supporter: This was a revolutionary kind of campaign. What they're trying to do is to maintain that sense of engagement, meaningful, substantive engagement, that so many people felt they had during the campaign itself.

RAY SUAREZ: The president and his top aides regularly communicate by BlackBerry. And despite legal and privacy concerns, President Obama himself said in a weekend interview he may opt to keep his personal BlackBerry after all.

U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: What this does -- and it's just one tool among a number of tools that I'm trying to use to break out of the bubble, to make sure that people can still reach me, that if I'm doing something stupid, somebody in Chicago can send me an e-mail and say, "What are you doing?" You know? Or, "You seem detached," or, "You're not listening to what is going on here in the neighborhood."

I want to be able to have voices other than the people who are immediately working for me to be able to reach out and send me a message about what's happening in America.

RAY SUAREZ: Obama says he'll keep in mind anything he writes could become public.

Whitehouse WEB Site

No comments: