As Barack Obama is sworn in as President today, Change.gov will come to the White House.

As he takes the oath of office, the White House website – occupied by President George. W. Bush for the past 8 years – will also pass over to the young, tech-savvy Obama team.

The new site is expected to epitomise the change in approach between the two administrations, doing away with the current bland, informational website, and instead becoming a portal for “interactive government” and “open source democracy”.

Key to the idea is that President Obama harnesses the internet to keep in touch with the public’s everyday concerns. A taste of what is to come can be garnered from Change.gov, the official transition website, which is poised to become WhiteHouse.gov today.

The site has already invited people to submit ideas by e-mail for a “Citizen’s Briefing Book”.

"The best-rated ones will rise to the top, and after the inauguration, we'll print them out and gather them into a binder like the ones the president receives every day from experts and advisors," says Change.gov.

But that particular briefing book might turn out to be quite large. When the Obama campaign contacted the 10 million supporters on its e-mail list asking what Mr Obama should do when he enters the White House, it received more than half a million replies.

Ideas such as these has led to him being dubbed the first “wired” President. Mr Obama has already utilised the web to sweep to power and hone his message to a younger audience previously disengaged with politics. His election was the most successful internet-driven campaign, using the web to secure millions through small campaign contributions and using social-networking tools to communicate and direct his legion of supporters. His campaign even included advertising in video games in a new effort to reach out to young voters.

Unlike President Bush, who shortly before becoming President sent a final message to friends saying that he would no longer be using his e-mail, Obama looks set to keep his Blackberry e-mail device, strongly resisting the Secret Service and administrators who wanted him to hand it in over security concerns.

In a modern version of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fire-side chats, Mr Obama has posted weekly video addresses as President-elect on YouTube. "Obama 2.0" currently has more than 1 million MySpace "friends" and 3.7 million Facebook supporters.

"Using these tools is going to become a critical way that Barack is going to evaluate the performance of his own team," said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a Washington-based progressive think-tank.

"My joke is that at the Monday cabinet meeting the (agency) directors will be comparing notes on how many YouTube views they got and how many comments on their blog post."

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