Whitehouse.gov and OStatic Now Run On the Same Open Source Platform

Slowly but surely, the Obama administration is showing the support for open source that officials have promised. Only a few days ago, there was a new appeal to the administration to show more support, made in a widely followed manifesto post from Andy Updegrove. Now, it's good news to see that Whitehouse.gov has relaunched  as a site based on the open source Drupal content management system (which OStatic is also based on).

"We now have a technology platform to get more and more voices on the site," White House new media director Macon Phillips told The Associated Press. "This is state-of-the-art technology and the government is a participant in it."

As ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn notes, the Whitehouse.gov site now features five separate blogs, and Drupal is a particularly flexible platform for blogging. I do agree with Blankenhorn, though, that because of the sheer number of hackers and malware purveyors that target sites like Whitehouse.gov, site administrators are going to have to be vigilant about security. Presumably Acquia, which provides commercial support for Drupal and was co-founded by Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, will assist with tracking and fixing hacks and bugs.

Rendering Whitehouse.gov itself as an open source-based site is a good move by the Obama administratoin. If the experiment proves successful, it could lead the way to more pervasive use of open source tools within the infrastructure of the U.S. government. If you're interested in Drupal as a platform for your own site, check our post on useful resources.