Obama Admin Can’t Run Email

In what has to be the oddest twists of irony the White House email system (Exchange) has been down no less than 5 hours. To put a finer point on it. This is the case of people who can manage glitz using a Mac but don’t understand a damn thing about the underlying technology behind it. (Keeping in mind that Macs aren’t used to often as mail servers) —

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced the technical snafu at his 1:30 p.m. briefing, apologizing to the media for the e-mail silence this afternoon.

The result is maddening for the new White House team, which already has been frustrated with the archaic communications gear they discovered when they arrived at their offices.

White House aides had just switched over from their transition e-mails this weekend, finally handing out their new, government e-mail addresses when the outage hit.

Both outgoing and incoming mail are out, the result, an aide explained, of an outage with the Outlook server. The aide said the outage goes beyond the press shop. The first lady’s office is also without e-mail, as are other offices.

There was no indication when the e-mail service would return. For the moment, the press office is making even more use of the loudspeaker in the briefing room.

Well lets see. Exchange is the dominate mail server for any corporation over 500 seats using Windows. So I don’t think that the software is archaic. But I wonder, did the incoming administration fire the IT guy(s)? If they did and all the new IT guys know are Mac’s, well….. Psssst. I hear cans and string are going cheap.

Seriously this is an embarrassment. But might be par for the course in the coming years.

HT: Hot Air.
Linky.