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.'"
I'm sure there is a joke (Score:2, Offtopic)
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That's is the joke!
Commander Adama (Score:1)
Commander Adama would love the mish mash of non-interoperable systems-- it prevents cylon viruses.
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See my reply here for the punch line: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2339642&cid=36840394 [slashdot.org]
And why Defense Department IT is actually in "Irony Age".
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See also: http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm [lexrex.com] http://warisaracket.org/ [warisaracket.org]
"Written by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC, Retired
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I beli
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I was thinking the same thing. Hoss wasn't, after all, the Cartwright most likely to be admitted to Mensa.
But to get back on-topic... One wonders what selection process that went into the decision to buy software that doesn't quite do what is going to be needed when the shooting starts. Maybe the Marine brass thinks that computers work like they did in Star Trek TNG: just write a quick subroutine to perform a miracle when the mortar shells and RPGs start falling?
If only... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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...
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You only vote for them. The MIC hires them to run. And nowhere is there a law stating what their individual job descriptions entail.
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.
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Current veterans have NO desire to fuck over the discharged veterans they will someday BECOME. They are very conscious of the whole career path from Basic to retirement.
It's bureaucracy.
BTW, the Army is hardly desperate for Javelins now the Cold War is over and there is no enemy armor to shoot, but the program will live on like all the others. Besides, we need to sell them overseas (and use FMS leverage to kill off Israeli Spike sales to that end!). :)
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Yes, that's why we have golden parachutes for ALL workers.
Wait, no, that's just the top management that decides on policies. Rest of the workers just implement what those on top told them to, including shafting other workers. You know, just like in the army?
You don't have to be Einstein to work it out (Score:2)
Is it world war 4 already? Thankfully I seem to have slept through WW3.
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You do realise that anti-tank missiles aren't going to see that much action in WW3? After all the ABC stuff that will come down, there won't be much room for infantry. Well, not much room for humanity in general more like - there's going to be a lot of intact hardware, but almost no one left to operate it.
Look up. That's not a missile. (Score:2)
What relevance has that got to anything I posted?
You're out by one war and several thousand feet of altitude.
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He's useless from army's point of view.
He may not be an asset anymore but he certainly can be a liability for a nation with an all volunteer army. I know allot of people join up, because they know that they will be treated for the most part pretty well. They get to retire young with a good pension rather than the crappy 401k (which can turn out to be worth nothing potentially) the reset of us get. I really think the military knows its not in their interest to screw over ex-soldiers en-mass.
I realize that there are many cases where people are
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Can be mitigated cheaper with a PR campaign then taking care of them all? Seriously, see Bhopal for "how PR can mitigate worst kinds of disasters while giving victims next to nothing"
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If a McDonald's employee is maimed by an exploding deep fryer and goes to the news, it's bad P.R. for McDonald's. They'd swoop in and pick up the medical bills rather than risk bad press.
Yet a veteran gets his leg blown off, and no one makes a fuss. Doesn't anyone thing that perhaps not taking care of your permanently maimed and injured is at the very least bad P.R.?
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Not if you put enough money in PR to counter this.
#1 of corporate mottos nowadays is "spend a billion fighting something that may cost you a million to fix".
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Yet a veteran gets his leg blown off, and no one makes a fuss
Fussing wouldn't help things. Instead we provide top-of-the-line prosthetics, years of psychological, physical, and occupational therapy, additional consideration for promotion, a medical retirement plan, and a (admittedly not as large as it could be) and lump sum payment. It is heart-wrenching when the system fails veterans who have been hurt, but the "bad press" can make people forget that the support is there and the failures are the exception, not the rule.
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How about we do the logical thing and nationalize weapons production. Doesn't it make sense that the Army guys get to build their own shit? Don't they know WTF they need the most and put the most heart and care into it? Tap that into a free advanced education for enlistment, and you get some highly technical people cranking out awesome projects. Don't you think it would be a great source of revenue for the country as well? Considering we sell arms all over the damn world. Shouldn't we the people be reaping
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it's so damn retarded. we could take all that extra money and do so many other things that actually benefit citizens. not this secret deals, friends come first circle jerk that is the military industrial complex. shut the whole thing down.
What really aggravates me is that it has repeatedly been demonstrated that who we vote for doesn't matter and that the powers that be will rip us off regardless of what we say or what industry is apparently in control... so why is it necessary for us all to suffer in the bargain? Can't they employ us in bioremediation instead of murder and rob us in the process of healing the biosphere instead of bombing brown people? If I'm going to be boned by the government, can't it be a peaceful process?
Of course, the
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They might actually do a cost benefit analysis that includes free software.
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The USMC does not get much of the defense budget. In fact most of their gear is stuff that the Army replaced. Why do you think Marines call it "The Suck"?
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They discussed both the Army and the Marines in the article.
If the Marines are using hand-me-downs from the Army, and the new equipment is not compatible with the old equipment, that's even more pathetic, because odds are the new and the old came from the same vendor.
I think that the operational flight software in an (Score:1)
I think that the operational flight software in an airplane should have to go though some kind of review as the last thing you want is a BSOD taking out the system in when the plane is in flight.
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...
So you mean ... like it does already? Have you heard of the FAA? Do you realize they have to certify everything that goes into an sort of aircraft bigger than an 'experimental'?
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That said they still have pretty damn stringent testing and reliability requirements.
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And yet they have more stringent certification requirements. US Military aircraft are some of the safest, most well maintained in the world.
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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
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This, ten times over. There is a reason why mission-critical stuff isn't messed with in the airplanes and such. This isn't iphone app that can die in a number of ways with no real fallout beyond buyer posting an angry comment.
Most of military hardware and software is at least half-generation behind the corporate one. Why? Because it's done to military standard, where failure is not an option, unlike corporate where failure is a number that it costs to fix the problem caused by failure divided by likelihood
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I think the General's request is perfectly reasonable. It's merely hard to accomplish - but the Marines do things that are quite hard to accomplish on a regular basis. Automated testing does wonders for flexibility - and every place I've ever worked has said they wanted more automated testing, but didn't back that up with resources. In avionics, where I suspect testing is the majority of the process, there are probably big wins to be had here by adopting selected ideas from Agile development.
I'd think th
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Probably:
$10k coding
$90k testing
$299.9m shuffling paper from one project manager to a quality manager to a process manager to an oversight manager to a test manager to a project manager to a procedure manager to an environments manager to an integration manager to a contractor who does all of the above all over again.
I'm sure there's a 'profit???' in there somewhere :)
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I was quoting TFA. He should hold Navy rank.
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I think that the operational flight software in an airplane should have to go though some kind of review as the last thing you want is a BSOD taking out the system in when the plane is in flight.
The basic idea of Ada.
Former Marine (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent my time under Clinton and Bush Jr as a 4067. That's a Computer Programmer in the Marine Corps. We had pretty solid gear available, decent servers, and a great network. One royal PITA though was the primary personel database was replicated out nightly from Kansas city. So any intra-base changes could take a full 24 hour window to propagate. Additionally, every 6 months we'd get someone new in charge of that database. And by "in charge" I mean a comitee, not a new DBA. And they would be compelled to rename half the tables and columns. Acronyms are good for 6 months, then all field names are typed in full, then we're down to 4 character codes, then into some strange "drop the vowels" campaign. ROYAL PITA.
As if that wasn't bad enough, in 2001 Bush and military leadership privatized the entire 4000 MOS field. 4066 (networkers) and 4067 (programmers) were lat moved to the 0600 MOSs (radio operators and field wiremen, along with some shunting to admin/clerical). So at the point I was heading out, we were going from a situation where Marines could review and make recommendations, to the point where purchasing decisions were almost entirely in the hands of private contractors.
It was removing just another cog in the machine to streamline the federal cash to corporate pockets process as the Foxes are now instructing the farmer on how to build a hen house.
-Rick
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It was removing just another cog in the machine to streamline the federal cash to corporate pockets process as the Foxes are now instructing the farmer on how to build a hen house.
...and the FOXes are selling support of it to the public. ;-)
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.
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The Marines are supposed to be a small, elite amphibious light infantry force. Marines should have two jobs, period: storming beaches and guarding ships.
No, we're not. Light infantry, yes, which is why I hate the fact that as an infantryman my BASIC (i.e. patrol will only be out about 2 hours) combat load was over 60 pounds (mostly due to the armor).
But a small force, not neccessarily. We are expeditionary in nature, so small tends to be the norm, but is not a requirement. We are also designed to be mostly self-supportive, having our own ground assets working in tandem with our own air assets. We rely on the Navy only for medical purposes (Corpsmen and th
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Sorry, but I don't get it. You seem to be arguing that "we need to be separate because we need to support ourselves", but you don't say why you need to support yourselves. It seems to me that you don't need to support yourselves at all, and you should just abandon your separateness and become part of the Navy. After all, the Marines have their own ships, aircraft, etc., and this really doesn't make sense. That's supposed to be the Navy's job.
In fact, it seems to me the entire "Marines" branch could be e
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Airforce Basic training: 6 weeks
Navy & Army Basic training: 8 weeks
Marine Corps Basic training: 13 weeks
Army riffle qual ranges: 200-300m (support, shooting bench, sand bags)
Marine Corps riffle qual ranges: 200, 300, and 500 meters (riffle sling only, no supports)
Army/Airforce/Navy primary occupation: defined by MOS
Marine primary occupation: Riffleman
Just saying, the Marines get the best bang for their buck in their training system. Trying to merge the MC into the Navy or Army would heavily bloat the tr
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Army riffle qual ranges: 200-300m (support, shooting bench, sand bags)
Marine Corps riffle qual ranges: 200, 300, and 500 meters (riffle sling only, no supports)
Army/Airforce/Navy primary occupation: defined by MOS ...
Marine primary occupation: Riffleman
Trust me, don't speak as a layman on this topic,
What the hell is a "riffle"?
Have you ever even shot a rifle? If you actually knew anything about the topic, or were a real Marine, I'd expect you to actually know how to spell the word "rifle". One mistake is
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That's why I get for typing with out a spell checker ;)
Thank you for insulting my time in the service protecting your basement dwelling mama boy's ass because I misspelled a word though, I really appreciate that. I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find plenty of other vets to pick on for assorted short comings as well.
And yes, I have shot a rifle before. I shot high expert 3 of my 4 trips to the range. Including a possible with an alibi at the 300 meter rapid fire and going 10/10 at the 500 meter line
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The fact that you were a programmer in Marines is indicative of the larger problem of mega-growth in government. Why the hell did the Marines have programmers?
I'm a big fan of downsizing the military, but this is just ridiculous. The Marines (and every other military branch) should have programmers, for the very same reasons that many large private companies have in-house programmers: because they know the business and the organization better than anyone else, have access to the information needed to do th
You misunderstand me (Score:3)
I'm all for smaller is better, but turning 50 government people to 50 contractors really doesn't make government smaller.
I don't want jobs simply turned over to contractors... I don't want any military duties turned over to contractors at all. My point, more directly would be "why is a Marine doing a job that a sailor should be doing"? Traditionally, the Navy provided whatever support Marines needed. But in today's environment, the Marines get their own programmers, cooks, accountants, etc, simply so they can be more "independent" from the Navy. But they were never supposed to be independent from the Navy. They're Marines, a
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OK, you're making a totally different argument here. Basically, you're questioning the way the Marines work as an organization, not the need for programmers.
Marines need programmers for the same reason the Navy and the Army need their own programmers: they're separate organizations, run separately. Now, you're calling that into question, which is perfectly fine, and you have a good point: aren't the Marines supposed to just be the muscle on Navy ships? But for whatever reason, that's just not the way it
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Traditionally, the Navy provided whatever support Marines needed. But in today's environment, the Marines get their own programmers, cooks, accountants, etc, simply so they can be more "independent" from the Navy
Cooks were privatized long before the Programmers were. I still remember when Quantico's enlisted chow hall switched from Marine cooks (think Segal in Underseige) to contractors. Our cost per plate sky rocketed and the food quality went to complete crap.
Our accounting staff is pretty light actually. Although we are an independent branch of the military, our budget is part of the Navy's budget. We get to push out own requirements, but our funding comes from them. Technically, we are a department of the Navy
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That kind of "He's got it so I want it too" attitude is a huge reason for that growth in government.
I would also strongly disagree with this statement.
We have air support. But our air support is geared around infantry support. We have significant rotary wing and close air support tools. The Airforce is significantly more wrapped up in bombing and pin point strikes. You don't have Air Force pilots swooping down to cover troup advances. The Navy does some bombing, and is also concerned primarily with ship defense. A lot more air-to-air gearing to ensure that anyone trying to take a payload to a ship isn't g
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No, I don't see why there's such a thing as a Marine Corps computer programmer, and the idea of a Marine with that kind of cognitive capacity makes me think of a dog that can operate a radio, or a fist with a cerebellum.
The whole construction of the military is based on centuries-old organizational principles. We should by now have specialized fighting units of 10 or 12 different types based on tactical capability (bombing, fighters, helo, beachhead, mechanized infantry, area denial, intel, etc.), and one
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The USMC is the smallest branch of the military (not counting the USCG), as such they are very selective over who they recruit and tend to recruit the best. The stereotype of the "dumb jarhead" is nowhere close to reality. The last thing you want on the battlefield is a dumb Marine. You also do not seem to realize that 90% + of what the Marines do are non-combat jobs.
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As a non-Marine, I'm still going to agree that you've got your head way up your ass. Do you think our wars are still fought with sharpened sticks and smoke signals or something?
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I always find it fascinating how they throw acronyms and magic numbers around that mean absolutely sod all to anyone outside their circle.
I used to data a librarian. She was nice but I just had to dump her. I'd say "Shall we go eat?", and she'd go, "Good idea, let's have a 641.5951!"
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I won't disagree with that. I will disagree with duplicating that in a regimented fashion. The Army and Marines could be using the same intel and personnel systems, and the difference between them could be limited to the boots on the ground.
I'm sure someone will try to argue that it has to be specialized vertically, but they don't know much about systems architecture if they do.
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Put a cork in it, meathead. My girlfriend is the smartest Marine you ever heard of (she's in the Army now, so that might account for some of it). But she was an MP when she was a Marine. It just blew my mind a little that there are computer programmers on staff. I expect that sort of thing to be contracted out.
"most units have no clue how the hell any other unit operates. The two units I was in had completely different missions and operated completely different to facilitate that mission"
That's exactly
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Marines: whatever the army do, we do different! (Score:2)
Sure you can, it's called SAP [BBC style voice: other ERP systems are available].
I mean, it worked for the army [slashdot.org].
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I now work for a global company that is a tiny fraction of the scope of the US military, heck, we're a tiny fraction of the scope of just the Marine Corps. We're implementing SAP. It is scheduled to be a 15 year process, with constant support of IT, Regulatory, Development, and tons of other business units all driven by a global stearing commitee.
To say that they can just "implement SAP" and all their problems will be solved and they'll no longer need an IT department is ignorant to a significant degree the
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I'd get out of there if I were you. Are you implementing SAP or rewriting it?
And before you call people (especially ones with +10 years experience in the subject) ignorant, perhaps you should read the article they linked to.
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My appoologies. I did not mean to say that YOU were ignorant, but that someone who says "Just impliment SAP" like it's a magic switch of money savings is ignorant. I should have been more clear about that, sorry.
We are implementing, but like so many poorly implemented solutions I've experienced in the past, the steering commitee is trying to adapt SAP to the business instead of having the business adopt SAP practices. And as you have likely experienced, that's a train wreck in the making.
-Rick
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Sorry, I'd just assumed that you didn't grok the sarcasm of a link saying "it worked for" going to an article describing how it clearly didn't.
It's interesting to compare and contrast - one service went for a package, one went for custom development but the result seems to be the same.
It's a classic make vs buy question. Seems your organisation solved the question by doing both ... and you're right, it's not the first.
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"To think that your average Marine or Solider can't think or be creative is an insult."
True, true. One of the smartest people at the regional phone company top-level DSL tech support, with direct control over literally millions of circuits and tens of thousands of optical switches, had spent a 20-year hitch enlisted in the Army motor pool. The thing is, intelligence and creativity are usually actively punished by the system, especially if there is already a defined process that is being modified or ignored,
You can all scoff.. (Score:2)
... the department is pretty much in the Stone Age as far as IT is concerned...
They said the same thing just before the toasters arrived.
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Well, if you recall, or perhaps this was your entire point, it was the ONE Battlestar that didn't have all the computers networked and in the process of being mothballed for being too old, that wasn't blown to bits by them "toasters".
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...
Re:Already up to date (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is totally not any different than companies that ALSO have vendors who know how to work the procurement system. I once specced out some hardware for purchase by a company, that was replaced instead at purchase by totally different hardware that I had explicitly said WOULD NOT WORK after evaluation. So they bought it and I shelved it after some failures and we never got the hardware that worked.
A really great leader is one that knows how to skirt the annoying laws that bind them. Just because you hav
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The problem at the DoD is that for any of those procurement processes there are multiple layers of regulations and laws that if violated will allow the contractor to sue the US Government and in some cases the official overseeing the contract. Short of a few anti-trust and contract rules, as an individual corporation you are free to solicit bids from anyone or exclude anyone for (almost) any reason. The Secretary of Defense does not have t
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True.
'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.'
This sounds like every corporation where I have ever worked.
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True.
'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.'
This sounds like every corporation where I have ever worked.
Some companies experience a lot more pain than others when it comes to that, though.
Whiny Kundra? (Score:1)
outgoing federal CIO Vivek Kundra said the same IT contractors keep getting government business not because they are necessarily providing the best technology, but because they understand the procurement system. He described it as almost an "IT cartel" within federal IT.
...and you fixed that...how? Don't let the door hit you on the ass...
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.
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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.
I was out at STRATCOM around '95 doing a computer upgrade. Given the role of the computers at this site I had a guard with a gun standing behind me the whole time. You better believe I hoped nothing would "go wrong". Lawyers were the least of my worries.
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Do you really think the guards will shoot you if you had a technical problem? I think they were there to make sure you didn't steal the equipment or walk home with a bunch of data.
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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.
In theory military grade could be a thing for IT. It could be strong encryption, dedicated and untappable links, quantum cryptography, etc. However, making something considerably more secure while also keeping up with the pace of development in IT is next to impossible.
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.
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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
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yea well (Score:3)
what do you really expect when you whore out every project to the (random) lowest bidder?
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.
This is their complaint, now? (Score:2)
They are complaining about "It's crazy, we buy proprietary [and] we don't understand what it is we're buying into", AFTER the NMCI>/a>? [wikipedia.org]
Which was/is a fiasco, one I had direct experience with, and predictably so before it was started. But they wanted it.
Now they complain. And I'm hoping the General isn't focusing on battlefield systems, cause that's a world of a very different design and build philosophy, and needs change to survive in the modern era.
My time in the Navy on an FFG (Score:4, Interesting)
I enlisted under what the navy calls Advanced Electronics Computer Field. I expected to actually, ya know, work on advanced electronics or computers. Was I in for a shock. Instead, I wasted my early and mid 20's working on 1970's era comm gear. The computer I spent the most time on was the UYK-20 which actually had a PAPER TAPE as the primary method of input. I actually envisioned working on modern equipment. The newest piece of gear I got to work on was the R-2368 receiver.
God I wish I could sue the navy for false advertising. Fuck them.
Hate to say I told you so, but (Score:2)
Extremely fenced markets. (Score:2)
Defense is a sector where free markets dont play a role. I am absolutely sure: If you have a small startup which implements a brilliant system, you would go bankrupt before you are allowed to link it to the systems of the big guys. Then they would buy the rest of that startup for nothing.
I worked for MARCORSYSCOM (Score:2)
The problem is system accreditation (Score:2)
The technology is part of the problem. (Score:2)
The technology we have today is part of the problem. It simply does not allow the easy storage and retrieval of information. When I say "easy", I mean as easy as storage being "here are the data" and retrieval being "give me such and such data". There is a tremendous amount of work required to make information available for storage and retrieval.
The core issue of the problem is that there is not a single standard protocol about information. Each database, application and operating system speaks its own lang
if only there were a whistleblower ... (Score:2)
who had pointed this out!
oh wait. there was. in the NSA, there were quite a few actually.
"preferred supplier" and "software vetting" (Score:2)
i worked for NC3A for a while so became very familiar with this situation, which applies just as well to the local Reservoir Water Supply (which has to be secure!) as it does to Police, Fire and Military. the problems that secure locations have is that both the supplier and the software itself require "vetting". the actual cost of this vetting is itself both significant and time-consuming. i heard of one organisation that was still using python 2.1 in 2007, a full 5 years after it had been retired - it wa
Let's throw some money Ballmer's way (Score:2)
Defense Department IT actually in "Irony" Age (Score:2)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net] ... Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per sq
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not actually american, and making the american military more effective is not necessarily in my interests. Just would be sorta nice for more of that incredibly vast american military expenditure to be going towards improving free and open source software, which improves the world, not just america.
That would mean more money available for bombs to drop on you. Instead, push for Windows For Warships [wired.com] and you can watch us tow our destroyers out of your harbors on Patch Tuesdays.
Re: (Score:2)
For the most part, the military wouldn't really have to contribute back to open source. The GPL only requires distribution of source if the binary is distributed. However for the purposes of distribution [gnu.org] an organization is considered one entity. So if an organization (such as the military) chose to create a derivative work of some open source software purely for internal use, they wouldn't have to give anyone the source. I would imagine that most military developed software would be for internal use on
Re: (Score:3)
The hidden military is ran by the most top notch scientists in the world working on back engineering technology either not from earth, or hidden technology on each that was discovered using our tax dollars (but we don't get to see anything from this research, it trickles down over the years)
You're kidding, right? While the idea that the government has a UFO from Roswell sounds cool and like a great movie plot, if they really had been reverse-engineering UFO technology, don't you think we'd have seen some m
Re: (Score:2)
Conspiracy theories always amuse me. Tell me, Mr. AC, how much more advanced than us are your space aliens? A hundred years more advanced? Two hundred? A thousand? After all, they're flying interstellar spacecraft a
Re: (Score:2)
Servers can be bought off the shelf and Linux is pretty secure. The point is how much hardware and software could a group of geeks provide for 10 billion that would be state of the art and possibly better than state of the art on the software side?
The problem is that you aren't allowed to do "pretty secure" - you have to lock down everything to the point where it doesn't even work, then write detailed justifications for every change that you need in order to use the system.
It's the bloated military contractor system that is keeping them in the stone age and throwing a few hundred billion at their current suppliers will change nothing.
This is a huge part of the problem. Even if you want to do things better you are often explicitly or implicitly forbidden from doing so by law, regulation or corporate policy.