The Associated Press reported this weekend that the official White House website has been switched to using the open-source Drupal content management system

Using open source will result in improved security -- because more programmers will be looking for errors in the software -- as well as more quickly and less expensively updated, the AP said.

The White House site had been using technology held over from the administration of former President George W. Bush, but the staff had been working toward the transition since the inauguration. For example, the website that tracks stimulus spending, launched in February, was already built using Drupal.

Several other federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, and the General Service Administration, are also said to be using Drupal.

However, modifications made by the White House staff, such as to improve security, have not thus far been given back to the Drupal community, noted Tim O'Reilly in his blog. "The source code for Drupal (and the rest of the LAMP stack) is indeed available, but the modifications that were made to meet government security, scalability, and hosting requirements have not yet been shared," he said.