Top General: Defense Department IT In "Stone Age" 155
CWmike writes "U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James 'Hoss' Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was sharply critical Tuesday of the Defense Department's IT systems and said he sees much room for improvement. the department is pretty much in the Stone Age as far as IT is concerned,' Cartwright said. He cited problems with proprietary systems that aren't connected to anything else and are unable to quickly adapt to changing needs. 'We have huge numbers of data links that move data between proprietary platforms — one point to another point,' he said. The most striking example of an IT failure came during the second Gulf War, where Marines and the Army were dispatched in southern Iraq, he said. 'It's crazy, we buy proprietary [and] we don't understand what it is we're buying into,' he said. 'It works great for an application, and then you come to conflict and you spend the rest of your time trying to modify it to actually do what it should do.'"
Re:If only... (Score:5, Insightful)
You jest [quite successfully] but maybe the problem is too much money. If they had to throw bake sales to buy new radios maybe they'd be a little more careful about their purchasing decisions.
Already up to date (Score:4, Insightful)
He cited problems with proprietary systems that aren't connected to anything else and are unable to quickly adapt to changing needs. 'We have huge numbers of data links that move data between proprietary platforms â" one point to another point,' he said.
To me that sounds like military IT is perfectly in tune with modern corporate IT. It sure sounds like every big company (or even smaller ones) I've ever been at.
The problem is what he really wants is the future. What he really needs is a good IT dictator with some vision, and a lot of power to send balky IT people out to the front line. If anyone can iron out the ego issues that keep traditional IT mired in fiefdoms, it should be the military...
Open Standards are booring (Score:4, Insightful)
Military, Police, Fire departments....
Have this odd mindset when making decisions. Way back I was putting a bid in to to do a financial report in (I think we proposed a basic Crystal report to read off their SQL Database) reports for a fire department. Quick job easy to do... If the project failed no real impact. However the Chief was insist the quality of the the product was of utmost concern because what the do can be the difference between life and death. Then they went with an other company who was willing to make their own reporting system from scratch for a lot more, but they liked it because it was there and custom just for them. And some how this system was better then using an off the shelf system. And being that their jobs are so important they deserve better then off the shelf.
A lot of the mind set is in terms of hardware these groups have a lot of specialized equipment that is better then off the shelf, and non standard. Firetrucks, Police Cars which are highly modified version of standard cars, the military has "Military Grade" for their equipment. So they are use to thinking that their stuff in order to be useful needs to be non-standard and custom.
I am sure we know IT is kinda more broad. That a system designed to process data for 100,000 people either for corporate use or military makes little difference. The difference is if something goes wrong do you get attacked by lawyers from the company or do you get attacked by the lawyers of the military.
The internet is such a hostile place to move your data anyways military grade isn't any different, they just do it in a way that makes it difficult for it to moved to the right spots.
Re:I think that the operational flight software in (Score:3, Insightful)
FTFA:
"If you want to open up the operational flight software in an airplane, think something along the lines of five years and at least $300 million just to open it up and close it, independent of what you want to try to do to improve it," Cartwright said. "We've got to find ways to do that better and more efficiently inside the Department of Defense for sure."
Damned right. Operational flight software on a aircraft is so fundamental, it should be thought of as part of the hardware. 'Opening it up' is akin to redesigning the aircraft. You don't do that outside of the design and manufacturing environment. If you missed something in testing and acceptance, then there is a process for that. It takes 20 years sometimes to deploy new aircraft. You want to fiddle with the software over the weekend?
General Cartwright has NFI what he is asking for. And should be kept away from it. Stick to the desk, General, and the troops, and leave the engineering to the engineers.
Sheesh. A fair argument for not giving them more.
Re:Already up to date (Score:5, Insightful)
Lobbyists (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what you get when government bureaucrats are bribed and bidders take the rest of platforms that are needed. Surprise, since I.T. in these departments have no say in the purchases all hell breaks loose and the government wonders why hundreds of billions of dollars are missing. Meanwhile the corrupt companies use that money earned to buy off more politicians to write laws stating to buy their products at inflated prices where you and I pay for them in our taxes. Lovely ... anyone in the private sector knows what I am talking about too with this. Specifically when a CEO has lunch with his buddy at Crapware Inc, which sells a product that you need to support that only works with Windows Vista update 23303 on May 12th 2009 ... on a tuesday, in addition to another product that Crapware Inc. sells, that only works with IE 6 in Windows XP with Java 1.3.1, not 1.3.2 or 1.3.0, which all of course has to communicate together. More fun and joy and of course it is all your fault and not the CEO if it is expensive and can't work together you are the computer guy right?
The difference is in government all software and hardware is done this way and not just for some dumb executive's decision one time. Maybe if the pentagon had a CIO who made these decisions instead they could standardize on a platform so they can talk to each other.
Blame the procurement process (Score:5, Insightful)
When your process is so complex that procurement types have to go to classes just to understand it and has so many rules that no one really understands it you get a system that heavily favors companies that understand the rules better than the people running the system. They know exactly what to do to meet the letter of the law and how to protest if they lose a bid so inmany cases the government is at their mercy. Combine that with a contracting officer's fear of even accidentally violating the rules and winding up in trouble and you have a system that always goes the "safe" route
Re:If only... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's entirely misapplication. The military is a ginormous bureaucracy with truckloads of money, and has most of the same problems any other large government agency does. We can buy truckloads of consumables for the Javelin platform at $40,000 a pop, but a veteran has to kick and scream to have his PTSD cared for.
It's almost like those guys we vote for to act as oversight aren't really doing their jobs...
Re:If only... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're missing the point. Javelins do the job army needs it to do. Discharged veteran doesn't. He's useless from army's point of view. This isn't "government bureaucracy", this is corporate thinking at its finest.
Re:yea well (Score:4, Insightful)
The buddies in the military then start the procurement process for said very specific system, setting the specs to be exactly matching what they and their former military buddies at BSHiT have developed. They do this because they know that in a few years when they get out, doing so will guarantee a nice high paying position at BSHit Inc.
Thus when bid time comes, anyone else has to design a system from scratch, to meet those very specific criteria, while BSHiT Inc, has the product already designed and built exactly to the required specs. And thus not having to go through a full design process they are able to bid very competitively, plus they have the in with the buddies still in the service who are managing the program, thus they win the bid because they have the advantage of not just being very competitive on the bid but also having "Worked very closely in the development of the product to meet the specs (when the specs were actually created to meet the product), so they win the bid.
Now as the procurement process goes on, other units and folks in the same field also now get to chirp in with what they'd like this system to include. Oh it needs to be able to communicate over the radio, and that radio, and satellite and Ethernet and via cans on a string! It needs this, it needs that. And thus the hardware becomes a mishmash. Then it needs to be hardened.
And finally we get to the software, to make the sale they gin up their software package, ensuring it works wonders in the small scale demonstration. That's fine until it gets deployed and the software soon craps out when the real-world turns into a large scale event.
So finally the product gets to the soldiers in the field, they are ordered to use this system because we've spent millions buying and fielding it, but it barely works. Oh but BSHiT wisely built a very expensive support system into the purchase contracts, so now on every major FOB in Iraq and Afghanistan they're paying some slob six figures tax free to keep the system barely scraping along. This highly paid geek, who gets full room and board for free as well, might have to occasionally work, but after a couple years they've tweaked the system and trained the soldiers how to not crash the system so they might have to work a couple hours a week.
So the system scrapes along, and it survives because the soldiers figure out how to work around the system. They create their products, then export them to MS Office, clean them up and email the products. Their still running the overpriced, under-capable system but their best final products are created by taking the output of the system, importing it into a kludged together Access database, and presented via PowerPoint or on a Publisher produced website. But when asked they can always point to the BSHiT system and prove that they are using the system.
Lowest bidder didn't win because to be lowest bidder they couldn't quite meet the custom designed specs.
Oh and after a few years BSHiT will be swallowed up by Lockheed, L3, or one of the other big corps. The product and service won't improve, just the name behind it gets better known.
Re:Former Marine (Score:5, Insightful)
At a guess, one reason would be that they are under military discipline so can actually be sent where required. Meanwhile a contractor gives you a string of teenagers in India that are replaced and moved onto a bigger cash cow once they've got a bit of experience on your job.
So I'd say it was about the Marines retaining control of their software projects. I'd also say the events of the past decade at least have shown that they are doing a lot more than storming beaches.