For a BlackBerry-toting president, Barack Obama probably assumed his new White House home would include cutting edge technology.
Technology was part of Mr Obama's hugely successful election campaign as he reached out to millions of voters through Facebook and other online tools.
Online reports and blogs the day after Mr Obama took office portrayed a different picture.
His officials apparently ran into a brick wall of federal bureaucracy, encountering a pile of disconnected phone lines, old computer software and security regulations forbidding outside email accounts.
No wonder federal officials were so keen to prise Mr Obama's BlackBerry out of his hands before he took office.
Although the official reason was that someone could hack the President's smart phone, it appears the real reason might be they could not understand what it was.
At the White House, there is no Facebook to communicate with supporters, no outside email log-ins, no instant messaging - a bit of a problem for the officials and staff who helped elect Mr Obama through things like relentless online social networking.
The White House switchboard reached near melt-down status as supporters phoned wanting some update.
Those calls who reached the switchboard were greeted by a recording, redirecting callers to the presidential website.
Mack-line checked the website soon after Mr Obama's inauguration and again about 16 hours later.
The new website, while receiving praise from the US media, appeared to be in limbo.
It did not offer any updated postings of President Obama's busy first day on the job, which included an inaugural prayer service, an open house with the public and meetings with his economic and national security teams.
The Washington Post wrote that the site did not reflect the transparency the Obama Presidency promised to deliver.
"The President has not yet issued any executive orders," the website stated hours after Mr Obama had issued executive orders to tighten ethics rules, enhance Freedom of Information Act rules and freeze the salaries of White House officials who earn more than $US100,000.
The site was finally updated on Friday (NZ time) but did not include the promised blog entries.
A report online said one member of the White House's new-media team went to work right after the swearing-in ceremony only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated or even which computers could be used for which purposes.
The team members, who were used to working on Macintosh computers, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software.
Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing.
Senior officials were reported to be chafing at the new arrangements, which severely limit mobility.
The rules are in place partly by tradition but also for security reasons, and to ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential Records Act.
But after two years with instant communication almost everywhere, Mr Obama's team will want to find new ways around the conventions.
They might get some new help from the new administration's broad new strategy to protect the nation's most vital information networks from cyber attack and to boost investment and research on cyber security.
The strategy, as outlined in a broader policy document on homeland security priorities posted on the Whitehouse.gov website listed the following goals:
•Strengthen Federal leadership on cyber security: Declare the cyber infrastructure a strategic asset and establish the position of national cyber adviser, who will report directly to the president and will be responsible for co-ordinating federal agency efforts and development of national cyber policy.
•Initiate a safe computing R&D effort and harden our nation's cyber infrastructure: Support an initiative to develop next-generation secure computers and networking for national security applications.
Work with industry and academia to develop and deploy a new generation of secure hardware and software for our critical cyber infrastructure.
•Protect the IT infrastructure that keeps America's economy safe: Work with the private sector to establish tough new standards for cyber security and physical resilience.
•Prevent corporate cyber-espionage: Work with industry to develop the systems necessary to protect our nation's trade secrets and our research and development.
Innovations in software, engineering, pharmaceuticals and other fields are being stolen online from US businesses at an alarming rate.
•Develop a cyber-crime strategy to minimise the opportunities for criminal profit: Shut down the mechanisms used to transmit criminal profits by shutting down untraceable Internet payment schemes.
Initiate a grant and training program to provide federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies the tools they need to detect and prosecute cyber crime.
•Mandate standards for securing personal data and require companies to disclose personal information data breaches: Partner with industry and our citizens to secure personal data stored on government and private systems.
Institute a common standard for securing such data across industries and protect the rights of individuals in the information age.
Those are laudable aims, but none of us need reminding that most of the spam in the world comes from the US.
Just maybe Mr Obama's information technology team will find a way to be online safely, reduce spam and protect the safety of us all online.
