All the Web 2.0 savvy, Facebooking, Twittering, Crackberrying technorati coming into the White House this week got the ultimate wake-up call about the state of government IT: some of them didn’t even have phones waiting for them, according to the Washington Post.

The Press office continues to use GMail to do its work, while web divas coming in to work on the White House website were horrified to find that rather than Macs, they would be using Windows XP.

Considering the turnout at a recent Web 2.0 breakfast run by the Bethesda AFCEA chapter, it would seem that there are many who share their pain — and also many who have no idea what they’re talking about. A favorite moment from that breakfast: after a discussion of how NASA JPL was using Second Life for educational purposes, a woman asked if Second Life was interactive, and how questions got answered. Eventually the nice young AFCEAn tending the mic explained to her that maybe this wasn’t the forum for these questions….