Your Internet Consultant - The FAQs of Life Online

9.5. Does anyone use the White House's online services?

Apparently so. The following is from a White House press release issued in January of 1994, showing how its electronic offerings were used in the first six months since it went online.

Here is a brief outline of the principal first-year achievements of the White House Electronic Public Access Project.

1.  In the six months since June 1st, we have received over 100,000
e-mail 
messages to the President & Vice President.
1a. This is the first Administration to accept e-mail from the public.
1b. President Clinton is the first sitting President to send e-mail to 
citizens--5th graders in Oxford, Ohio, Spring, 1993.
2. This is the first administration to establish Internet addresses for 
President & Vice President: president@whitehouse.gov   
vice-president@whitehouse.gov
3. Over 220,000 requests for information have been processed
electronically since September 1, 1993.
4. In 1993 1,600 public documents were published electronically.
4a. This is the first administration to establish an electronic
self-service public document library: publications@whitehouse.gov.
The service opened experimentally in December, 1993.
5. The first ever live online computer conference by a sitting
Vice President was done by VP Gore on 1/13/94.  The VP took 10
questions in a 45-minute forum.
6.  We initiated the first White House forums on commercial networks:
America Online, CompuServe, GEnie, MCI Mail
7. Americans Communicating Electronically, an all-volunteer
organization, was started in Spring 1993. ACE represents the NII
in action. It aims to provide government services
electronically and enable interactive communications between
government agencies and the public, especially those citizens
without modem-equipped computers.
8. Starting in November, we became the first administration to
post audio files of the President's Saturday radio talks to the
Internet. This use of Internet radio is our latest experiment.

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