The content of the White House website is designed to be an open portfolio for the public to know the current operations of the president during their presidency. The website contains information about the president, the vice president, their families, press releases, proclamations, executive orders, and a transcript of speeches by White House officials.
The website also provides information about the current issues the president and vice president address (like education, healthcare, etc.), also providing information about the history of the White House building, Air Force One, and Camp David. The website also reviews the structure of the federal government of the United States, including details about state and local government, along with voting and elections.
The website also offers information about getting involved with the White House. This includes directions on how to write or call the White House, as well as details about the White House Internship Program and the White House Fellows Program.
After a new administration is sworn in on Inauguration Day, the website is immediately redesigned for the new administration. Past administration websites are archived by the National Archives.
On September 1, 2011, David Plouffe, Senior Advisor to the President of the United StatestoBarack Obama, announced in an email that the White House was releasing "We the People", an online platform for the public to create petitions to the US Government. The launch of the petitioning platform was announced by Katelyn Sabochik on September 22, 2011 in a White House blog post.[3]
On December 19, 2017, the Trump administration announced its intention to temporarily shut down the platform and replace it with a "new platform [that] would save taxpayers more than $1m a year", though ultimately it was retained in its initial form.[4] On January 20, 2021, the day of the inauguration of Joe Biden, the platform started redirecting to the main whitehouse.gov domain, marking the discontinuance of the feature by the incoming administration. It has not been relaunched since.[5]
^A Spanish version of whitehouse.gov is currently available under the Biden Administration and was also used during the Bush and Obama administrations. During the Trump Administration, the Spanish version of whitehouse.gov was removed. There is also archived Spanish versions of the website from the Bush and Obama administrations.
^The Clinton version of the site was archived several times during the administration and this is last archive of the site. Other versions can be found by changing the id in the URL between 1 and 5.
