Howard M. Friedman [Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Toledo College of Law]: "For an administration that has made so much of both transparency and technology, to date the Obama staff has earned an extremely low grade on content and timeliness of the new White House website. The Bush White House quickly posted Presidential statements and remarks, news items regarding the President's activities, bill signings, and the like. It also posted transcripts of daily press briefings. The Obama White House website, at least so far, has little of this.

Much of the website contains fairly static material. The "Briefing Room" section is apparently intended as the repository for current developments. Presumably Obama's section captioned "The Blog" is intended to be the replacement for daily news postings from the Bush White House. However, as of Thursday afternoon the latest Blog posting was Obama's Inaugural Address. The media have chronicled a number of newsworthy events occupying the President on Wednesday and Thursday. One might have at least expected some mention online of the second "swearing-in" of President Obama.

Like the Bush website, Obama's has sections for the text of Executive Orders and Proclamations. One would have hoped that the important Executive Orders relating to the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility would have been posted immediately upon their issuance. As of Thursday afternoon, they had not appeared.

I suspect there were press briefings on Wednesday and Thursday. No mention of them, let alone transcripts, appears. There is a section of the website for "Pool Reports." As of Thursday afternoon, none appear.

A final irritation is that the Obama White House has taken down all the primary source documents (Executive Orders and Proclamations) that were on the Bush White House site. Many of these still have the force of law, and continued access to them in some way would be most helpful.

Perhaps the new White House webmaster's office has not yet quite gotten its act together. However I would expect more since the first White House Blog posting that appeared emphasized that the new website (put up within minutes of Obama's swearing-in) "will feature timely and in-depth content to keep everyone up-to-date and educated.""