In the White House, finally appeared ... color printers

White House staff in 2015 (NYT). In this office, the equipment is not the oldest, but it is rather an exception.

And not only printers - the entire fleet of computer equipment has been updated. The New York Times reports that White House employees have received modern laptops, smartphones and even color printers. Why just now? In this case, officials are faced with a typical multi-level management, when several organizations are responsible for a single process (updating equipment).

In the USA, these are the State Security Council, the Presidential Executive Office, the Secret Service and the White House Communications Agency. The ideal bureaucracy, so to speak. All these organizations must coordinate among themselves many processes, including upgrading equipment. Last year, the situation came to a standstill - the services could not agree among themselves, and the equipment was very outdated, both morally and physically. But the update process has already begun, and it could not be slowed down.

Therefore, in 2015, the White House hired David Recordon (David Recordon) Director of Information Technology at the White House (Director of White House Information Technology). He previously held the position of technical director of Facebook. And last year, the White House created a job and position specifically for the Record. And he gradually spent studying the IT infrastructure of the White House, optimizing it. Only duplication and replacement of obsolete wired network segments took about 6 tons of twisted pair. However, many of the employees worked on Intel 486 computers, with the Lotus Notes mailer.

It is reported that now the staff received new PCs with powerful modern processors and fast SSDs. As mentioned above, employees also acquired smartphones (mainly, iPhone). The wireless network bandwidth has been improved, only now the Wi-Fi network has become able to provide online broadcasts from the Roosevelt Room, the main office of the US presidents. The security system has also been improved: a new software has been installed to track visitors, the password skip system has been replaced with a chip one (each employee is issued a card with a chip).

It took two years to replace the technical base of the White House, and this process would have continued until now, if not for David Recordon. There were a lot of difficulties, and one of them is the lack of schemes or design solutions relating to various building infrastructures. So, once a room was found in the basement, which was filled with telephone equipment. Technicians were able to replace all this with a system the size of a small refrigerator.