White House Web Site Gets Face Lift

W A S H I N G T O N, July 7 -- The White House Web site has gotten a face lift, and President Clinton says that now it’ll be even easier to use the Internet to conduct business with the federal government.

“We’ve made the Web site a permanent part of the Executive Office of the President,” Clinton says in a weekend Webcast, “so that future presidents will be able to change it to suit their needs as easily as they can change the furniture in the Oval Office.”

The whitehouse.gov site — launched six years ago — is now billed as faster and more user-friendly for the 1.2 million users who visit each week. “The search engines are dramatically more efficient,” says Mark Kitchens who helps manage the site.

Behind the cleaner design and brighter colors is a new technology that can recognize the type of browser being used. New navigation bars and search icons make it easier to look up subject categories.

And the White House claims it now offers the quickest routes to 9,000 pages of information on the government’s most popular destinations: tours of the White House art collection, reservations for campsites in national forests, help estimating your retirement benefits, and researching the pets who have lived in the White House.

Promoting the Veep

The new format also gives greater prominence to Vice President Al Gore, who wants to succeed Clinton. For instance, photographs of the vice president adorn the top of the page promoting the White House Internet accomplishments.

And the president promises there is more to come before Election Day. At a new site being developed, firstgov.gov, he says “Americans can find every online resource offered by the federal government,” all listed at a single Web site.