UPDATE: Obama's Press Secretary confirmed that the President will be able to keep using his beloved BarackBerry, following all Presidential Records Act rules, but access to its email address will be limited to key personnel.

It looks like a bumpy road ahead for the tech fans in Obama's administration, as they begin to learn that the ins and outs of White House regulations for secrecy, record keeping, and disclosure aren't exactly compatible with what the team is used to from its time on the road campaigning. While social networking played a big role in winning the election, much of those social sites are going to fall by the wayside now, as restrictions on how messages are sent keep things like announcements on Facebook and Twitter from being permitted. Taking this step backwards is, as a spokesperson put it, "kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari".

While the initial launch of the new White House website looked promising, watchdogs are already pointing out its failures. Part of Obama's planned expansion of transparency in government was to keep accounts of all his executive orders and let the public see all legislation before it's signed into law. Since the inauguration, President Obama has already made some orders, yet the site has been slow to update the list. It's too early to tell if this is a sign of things to come, of red tape or chain of command keeping information from flowing quickly.

President Obama himself is in for a big tech change personally, as he has to make some serious adjustments to how he communicates. It seems like his BlackBerry has been glued to his palm for much of the campaign, becoming a symbol - the BarackBerry, if you will - of his modernity compared to McCain and his perceived computer illiteracy. The fly in the ointment here is twofold, as Obama's smartphone will need to both support stringent record keeping requirements as well as be secure enough to handle classified data.

Despite initial rumors to the contrary, it looks like Obama will still be able to keep his BlackBerry for some uses, especially now that we've gotten word of an NSA software package that should secure data rated up to the "secret" level. We don't know his tech support team plans on fixing the archival problem, though. It seems clear that Obama will have to adopt a new smartphone, if only for "top secret" and other more sensitive calls. The likely candidate is a bulky, odd-looking device called the Sectera Edge.

The Edge is essentially two devices built into one casing: a standard Windows Mobile device and a secondary, secured operating system. Users can switch back and forth between the two modes with a touch of a button. There are duplicate ports, as one USB connection is for unclassified data, and a second for whatever's classified.  The Edge even has dual screens, with the main screen handling the big OS functions and a secondary smaller screen, what looks like a simple monochrome LCD, for displaying secure, encrypted message. There are some really cool functions, like the ability to swap the network module for support of either GSM or CDMA networks, but it doesn't look like it lends itself to a fun transition for someone who's got his BlackBerry skills down to a science.

So, while we'll give the administration time to get settled and learn its way through the tech regulations it now has to live with before making any final calls, it sure looks like it's not going to be a walk in the park for President Obama and his gadget-loving staff.

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