While I'm writing a bit about politics, I do want to say congratulations to President Obama on keeping his PDA, or at least in maintaining his habits of using tech gadgets (meaning he might not get to keep his original Blackberry PDA, but he'll be using a PDA that has been 'approved' for his use).

I will say that the fact that President Obama is tech savvy and is a Crackberry addict could bode well for IT types working for the government.  I don't mean to besmirch the past administration, but many times along the way rules and regulations and requirements that were handed down seemed to, well, lack some common sense and technical expertise behind them or the application of them.

Information Technology shouldn't scare our government leaders.  They should be able to use the same technology or at least the same features as are present in that technology, in doing their daily jobs.  They should also understand the negative impact of making policy related to such technology without understanding how the technology actually works in a typical environment.  If they do understand IT and benefit from and use IT they will hopefully make smarter decisions and allow for implementing better solutions for everyone's benefit.

President Obama will be using some souped-up super secure PDA, but by using one at all he'll hopefully help drag the White House into the modern era.  He'll have the fun of remembering that the data he enters or receives is subject to public release which should make him be more aware of information security, and will certainly make those around him be more aware of information security.  As they work on meeting the laws they can hopefully help write better and smarter laws that govern information security.  Or so I hope.