Federal websites get the Bon Ami treatment

In the 1966 comedy movie, “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,” local townsfolk are astonished that bloodstains on the pipe organ keyboards of a supposedly haunted mansion can’t be scrubbed away. “And they used Bon Ami!” exclaims one of the matrons. (I don’t have high taste in movies, Oscar week notwithstanding).

Now it seems as if the Trump administration has taken Bon Ami to federal websites, trying to wipe them clean. But, like the organ keys in the Simmons mansion, residue from the Obama administration remains. The results are jarring. For instance, the EPA site has a new, bare design but information on highly-debated climate change activities are still there. Treasury has the old design, and as of Wednesday morning still had pictures of former Secretary Jack Lew. In all cases, former secretaries’ biographies have been removed, replace with the actings. Well, nearly all. At Commerce.gov — which has also been reduced to a plain look — the link to leadership brings up “vacant-vacant-vacant” complete with generic outlines of nobody.

Ironically in light of the hiring freeze, you can still find live links from “Learn more about job opportunities and internships at Commerce.”  USAjobs.gov still works. I found lots of openings when I typed “cybersecurity” into the title/skill/agency box.

Interior retains its pretty homepage with a golden-cheeked warbler pictured. But when you go to Past Secretaries, the list starts with Thomas Ewing in 1849 but stops with Ken Salazar in 2013. Sally Jewell apparently never existed. Weird.

Going through the sites is like walking through a model home. They only look real until you pick up that loaf of paper mâché bread.

Most dramatic are changes to WhiteHouse.gov. The homepage looks like a campaign piece. Your eyes go right to the big red square containing the words, “Let’s Make America Great Again, Together.” Under that, the somewhat paradoxical, “The Movement Continues — The Work Begins!” OK, but maybe it’s time to, you know, make it look a little more presidential?

I tried to reach the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. There’s no link from the main White House site. I did get to an archived OMB page from the George W. Bush administration. Another link took me to a generic page with this statement: “Thank you for your interest in this subject.” OFPP for the time has been vaporized.

You can still get to sites like CIO.gov, but only by backing in using its URL directly. But basically it looks as if the Office of Management and Budget got beamed to the ether.

Slowly the Trump team seems to gain the capability to post the flurry of presidential memos and orders roughly close to the time they’re leaked to favored media. (Some things never change).

Each incoming administration — WhiteHouse.gov launched during the Clinton years — has put its own imprimatur on the site, as you would expect. People and policies change profoundly. The electorate has toggled repeatedly between Democratic and Republican presidents.

Recall the Obama administration totally redid federal websites, and it took them a couple of years to get around to all of them. Obama’s team promised to blank out the web and social media sites, archiving its own material. It did. Now the Trump administration must move quickly to restore the coherence of the government online.

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