Instead of falling into the mindset of assuming that government is the bad guy, and instead of focusing on the Blackberry, I think the true challenge is to get more of the government to function like the Coast Guard

Michael, agreed, that was my point my lack of “human intelligence”; not enough competence at the helm, if any at all. The most disturbing characteristic of the Bush administration has been the lack of talent in his agencies. Especially at the junior executive equivalent level. Im stark contrast, Obama’s team looks phenomenal!! For all of his eloquence, I liked Obama most from the beginning because I believed that he was a very smart guy who would be willing to listen and synthesize multiple points of view– he’s a down-to-earth pragmatic intellectual.

On some other comments:

I probably didn’t state this loudly enough in my post … my point was not that Obama having a Blackberry would solve the problems of Washington DC. My point was that running a 21st century country with a workplace only using early 20th century technology isn’t what is needed here. Been there, done that with Bush.

The Blackberry is a symbol of a larger issue — and Buzzcut actually hits on an aspect of it: the bureaucratic culture (also partially coming from outdated notions about work and workplace).

As I’ve argued in previously, the workplaces changes being seen at places like the Big 4 Accounting Firms, Capital One, Bank of America, as well as the tech cos, are made possible because of new mobile, flexible technologies. The Blackberry is but one. But just adding technology didn’t make these firms more productive: it was a tool in a broader workplace change, breaking down hierarchies, getting people collaborating in formal and informal ways, and physically moving or removing walls.

Telling Obama he cannot have or should not have mobile technology represents a symbol of an attempt to hold on to an outdated idea of the White House workplace.

Hayden is right about human intelligence but here it wasn’t information, it was stupidity.

The military is far and beyond the best logistical entity anywhere. Unfortunately the rest of the government does a much poorer job. In the case of Katrina, the problems can be traced to lack of human intelligence as opposed to informational intelligence.

Certainly safeguards should be in place. Doctors also generally use e-mail very infrequently to avoid malpractice problems and additional document management issues. But Obama should be able to use his crackberry. I guarantee the military uses all kinds of devices as do the intelligence agencies. But he’ll need an executive order rendering it all classified.

Here’s an interesting question? Could Obama blog if he so desired??

Agreed. But you’re naive if you think a little IT is going to change things. It’s a systematic issue with how the bureacracy is structured, and even who the bureacrats are.

Think about it this way: remember when everybody and anybody was installing SAP? All these major corps were spending hundreds of millions of dollars for “enterprise resouce planning” software, but only some corporations were getting a ROI for it.

Why was that? Because some corporations “re-engineered” to align their corporate structure to work with the software, and other just plopped the software over existing structures. The former worked, the later didn’t.

My fear is, if you give bureacrats crackberries, they just become… bureacrats with crackberries, nor the “communicating, collaborating, in touch” people you desire.

I’m suggesting that for the good of the country and the economy, Obama should be allowed to make the White House an efficient, 21st century workplace.

This is only one of hundreds of areas where Obama will be urged to take the cautious approach. Security is of course an issue, witness the recent hacking of both campaigns databases by “a foreign entity.” But to be defined by possible problems is to be immobilized.