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Obama To Agencies: Optimize Web Content For Mobile

Posted by samzenpus on from the phone-of-the-people dept.

CWmike writes "President Barack Obama has ordered all major government agencies to make two key services available on mobile phones within a year, in an effort to embrace a growing trend toward Web surfing on mobile devices. Obama, in a directive issued Wednesday, also ordered federal agencies to create websites to report on their mobile progress. The websites are due within 90 days. Innovators in the private sector and the government have used the Internet and powerful computers to improve customer service, but 'it is time for the federal government to do more,' Obama said in the memo. 'For far too long, the American people have been forced to navigate a labyrinth of information across different government programs in order to find the services they need.'"

8 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Beauacracy by MikeMacK · · Score: 5, Insightful
    'For far too long, the American people have been forced to navigate a labyrinth of information across different government programs in order to find the services they need.'"

    Or perhaps we need to simplify the number of "programs", that might help too.

    1. Re:Beauacracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So which programs do you ditch, and how would it help? How would eliminating farm subsidies help someone find information on WIC checks?

      Knee-jerk anti-government responses may be great for karma-whoring, but there's no substance there. There may be a few edge cases where programs aren't pulling their weight and should be cut, but the vast majority of the government's efforts go into very important programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. Dragging those programs into the 20th century is commendable.

    2. Re:Beauacracy by Anon-Admin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So which programs do you ditch, and how would it help?

      How about all of them?

      We de-fund all of them, then each program has to come back to congress and justify it's continued existence. It has to provide supporting data that the job it is doing is needed and accomplishes the goals it was created for.

      Farm Subsidies and WIC are easy things picked by most people as an example. Take a look at The U.S. Agency for International Development, Or the federal grant for $765,828 that was given to bring an International House of Pancakes franchise to Washington, D.C, and there are thousands more. The number of wasteful programs outweigh the number of good ones.

    3. Re:Beauacracy by KlomDark · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are a fucking asshole.

      My daughter came around before I was financially ready to have kids. (Which happens to a LOT of people) If it wasn't for food stamps, we'd have starved. Having a kid to support put me in hyperdrive. I learned as much as I could at college, quit to start a company, company luckily went pretty good (Till investors chewed me up like the naive kid I was at the time.), still got enough money out of the deal to pay off my student loans, put a down payment on a house, and the experience was better than a stupid degree for getting me into the corporate world. (They want results, not pieces of paper) I've since worked for several Fortune 500 companies, architecting huge projects. The peak taxes I've paid in a year (The year I got bought out of my company) was about $100,000. So I've more than paid back the food stamps and the time welfare paid to fix my car, although the guy who owned the repair place was such a "republican" so he threw a big fit about it being government money and really did a shitty job.

      So shove your "Let's feed on the poor" up your ass. Next time it will be you that is poor. This life or the next.

      The "Well if they can't afford to have kids, they shouldn't have kids" is the lamest cop-out of a non-realistic solution to a wide-spread problem. You ought get your ass kicked for saying something so stupid and selfish.

      Basically you are saying my daughter should have been taken away from me back in the day? You suck shit. I raised her right, she's 22 now, has been thru college, just started her first career job making more money than I made at her age, and never got pregnant while a teenager.

      I wish I knew who you were so I could beat some sense in your vacuous head. The world has changed, and you are not part of it...

  2. Re:90 Days!? by pympdaddyc · · Score: 5, Informative

    To be clear, they are not being ordered to implement the new strategy in 90 days, they're being ordered to implement the new strategy in 12 months. The 90 day requirement is to have a page publicly documenting their progress.

    That said, I'm still curious whether agencies can move fast enough to get something like this done in even 12 months. =P

  3. Re:That'll go well. by coinreturn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh, quit your hate rant. He's trying to drag the government into the 21st century. He knows that mobile phones are everywhere and wants to make the government more accessible.

  4. Re:That'll go well. by jdgeorge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Any president would do this, regardless of party, for the same reasons Obama is: People want it, it's entirely reasonable, it's politically inoffensive, and both parties support it.

  5. Re:That'll go well. by coinreturn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wish people would make fun of your "religion" like they do mine.

    One more "religion" to add to the list, AGW, anti-AGW, Anti-Nukes, and Obama.

    The OP didn't say anything that people didn't say against Bush, hell he even said something bad about Bush.

    WTF are you talking about? I didn't make fun of any "religion" - unless your "religion" is one of spouting hate - the only thing I put down. If you think there aren't Obama haters out there - who will say anything no matter how ridiculous - then you must have your fingers in your ears and your your eyes closed. I don't think that this tiny detail is worth ranting against ANY president.