Everyone loves an upgrade—even POTUS. The New York Times reports that the White House has recently undergone a technological transformation, though it may not sound too impressive to many of us: Its employees are now equipped with modern laptops, iPhones and even... color printers.
It’s not easy to overhaul technology in governmental organizations, of course, and apparently it’s particularly tricky in the White House. That’s partly because, according to the Times, the infrastructure is actually overseen by four different bodies—the National Security Council, the Executive Office of the President, the Secret Service and the White House Communications Agency—making wide-scale change hard to agree upon and instigate.
But last year, the White House hired David Recordon—who planned Facebook’s office tech—to solve the problem. Since, his team has been tearing out old technology to install new. Quite literally, in fact: The Times reports that 13,000 pounds of redundant ethernet cabling was binned along the way.
So what technology does the White House now boast? Well, employees have new computers with “fast, solid-state drives and modern processors,” according to the newspaper, along with color printers. There’s a new phone system and many staff now tote iPhones. (Obama still uses a secure BlackBerry.) The wi-fi has been upgraded, so it’s now fast enough to live-stream video. And security has been increased too, with a new software system for managing visitors and a chip-based card system which is used by staffers instead of passwords.
You can read about the full overhaul on the New York Times, which contains some amusing anecdotes about big White House tech failures, too.
