Out of the gate running: Obama unveils change.gov

See update below.

Barack Obama isn’t wasting any time promoting and setting up a process for implementing his plan for change. There is a new web site up, CHANGE.GOV, where his governing agenda and transition process will be accessible to the world.

Very impressive. This clearly has been planned for a while, and you can bet that John McCain would not, could not, have done this.

Of course there’s an interactive component to the site and the project; that is, after all, a huge part of what got Obama elected. “An American Moment” lets you share your story about what the campaign and election mean to you. And, showing that he means to listen like he promised, there’s a page for inputting your “your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country.”

An overview of the top priorities are in the sidebar

1. Revitalizing the Economy

2. Ending the War in Iraq

3. Providing Health Care for All

4. Protecting America

5. Renewing American Global Leadership

Under the “Agenda” tab there is a more detailed menu of the new administration’s ambitious plan for change:

• Civil Rights
• Defense
• Disabilities
• Economy
• Education
• Energy & Environment
• Ethics
• Faith
• Family
• Fiscal
• Foreign Policy
• Healthcare
• Homeland Security
• Immigration
• Iraq
• Poverty
• Rural
• Service
• Seniors & Social Security
• Taxes
• Technology
• Urban Policy
• Veterans
• Women
• Additional Issues

In “Civil Rights” for example, a list of specific policies that address hate crimes, the courts and sentencing, pay equity and voter suppression. An excellent start.

And check out the America Serves tab:

America Serves

“When you choose to serve — whether it’s your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood — you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That’s why it’s called the American dream.”

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

If you are interested in a more traditional job in the administration: Apply here.

The transition process is promised to be transparent. Yes, there’s a blog.

Another feature I re-e-e-e-e-ally like about the site: a countdown timer:

74 Days Until Inauguration

Update [2008-11-09 23:45]:

I meant to post this yesterday. Seems that soon after I browsed change.gov, there was a significant wipe of the site. The tale is covered by Boing Boing (with links to cached pages), where Xeni seems sanguine about the strange unveil/reveil. In the bigger scheme of things, I don’t think this is a huge red flag, but it seems very strange that they would publish the site with surprising speed, then quickly pull chunks of it pertaining to the agenda. BB comments suggest various scenarios to explain this behavior, and also note that there is a copyright notice, which is certainly not usual for a government web site, which is, you know, paid for by the people.

Maybe after running such a seemingly near perfect campaign, making a series of rather doltish mistakes like this (and the Nancy Reagan joke at the press conference), is just so unexpected.