9 ms·

They got rid of the one employee least likely to make a mistake again. It was hardly their fault either. "This is not a drill" was part of the phone message t

They got rid of the one employee least likely to make a mistake again. It was hardly their fault either. "This is not a drill" was part of the phone message they received. Why the hell would you say that when it is a drill? The whole thing was a fiasco from the top to the bottom and shows they haven't even remotely approached operations from the very simple premise of "Humans make mistakes". They didn't even have a runbook for handling the scenario of a message being accidentally sent out.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
atonse 9y ago
While I agree with you in principle, there's more to it than that. There was another report that claimed that the employee suddenly refused to cooperate with any investigation to figure out what happened. It's likely their lawyers told them to stop talking, and that we don't know the full story here.
- proactivesvcs 9y ago
  My take on "there's more to it" is that the employee had allegedly already caused two false alarms through his own actions. The fact that he made a written statement then refused any other cooperation suggests to me that, rather than shirking his duty by this act, perhaps he knows better than to dig himself a hole by trying to be "helpful".
- csense 9y ago
  > It's likely their lawyers told them to stop talking, and that we don't know the full story here Any defense attorney will give him this advice. My guess is the investigation into this is not looking to discover the truth, it's looking for someone to blame. And the lower they are on the totem pole, the better. If the investigation is an impartial arbiter only concerned with truth and justice, then the guy should cooperate. In the real world, it's probably a kangaroo court that will forget all exculpatory statements and amplify all damaging ones. So if he tells the investigators: "Yeah, I clicked on it, but the message told me it was not a drill, and my manager never advised me there was an ongoing exercise" Then the prosecutor will tell the court: "During questioning he confessed to clicking the button. It's an open-and-shut case, send him to jail!"
nickkell 9y ago
It states in the article the employee made the mistake several times previously.
- riffic 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys
- candiodari 9y ago
  No it doesn't. Besides, that mostly means (we've all seen the interface) that that mistake was made before ... and nobody saw any reason to fix that UI. Mistakes have a cause. Not fixing it will cause repeats.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Actually, we haven't seen the interface. What we've seen is a general mockup of the interface, because they wouldn't release an image of it publicly.
scrumper 9y ago
This isn't an argument with your overall point. But your second sentence isn't quite right: "This is not a drill" is part of the alert message itself. If it is a drill, the instruction to issue the alert is prefaced with "EXERCISE EXERCISE EXERCISE." This is from a thing I read yesterday that I can't find now, so I can't back it up I'm afraid. But you see that it isn't quite as you think. (The UX of the system we all saw was truly terrible, but this employee had a track record of making similar mistakes.)
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Yes. Or similar. In Fire / EMS, we do training exercises and for anything involving detailed communications any "block" of radio interactions is both started and finished with "This is a training exercise". It's not done with every communication because that would be onerous but each block (typically managed by Dispatch, rather than field personnel). This avoids War of the Worlds style issues too, as our radio traffic is not encrypted and available on scanners.
garblegarble 9y ago
That's exactly what I thought, but then the recent FCC report (quoted at https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hawaii-ema-fires-missile-alert-sender-confusion-over-test-wasnt-new/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hawaii-ema-fires... with the source scanned and available at https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/report2018-01-29-181149.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/repor...) says: >Employee 1 has been a source of concern for the same SWP staff for over 10 years. Employee 1’s poor performance has been counseled and documented and the SWP members have stated that they are “not comfortable with Employee 1 as a supervisor, two-man team, or as a part of the SWP in general. He does not take initiative and has to be directed before he takes action. He is unable to comprehend the situation at hand and has confused real life events and drills on at least two separate occasions.”
- candiodari 9y ago
  Was that sentence written before or after the event ? Answer: after. So I give it at least 50% that this is scapegoating.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

atonse 9y ago

While I agree with you in principle, there's more to it than that. There was another report that claimed that the employee suddenly refused to cooperate with any investigation to figure out what happened. It's likely their lawyers told them to stop talking, and that we don't know the full story here.

proactivesvcs 9y ago
My take on "there's more to it" is that the employee had allegedly already caused two false alarms through his own actions. The fact that he made a written statement then refused any other cooperation suggests to me that, rather than shirking his duty by this act, perhaps he knows better than to dig himself a hole by trying to be "helpful".
csense 9y ago
> It's likely their lawyers told them to stop talking, and that we don't know the full story here Any defense attorney will give him this advice. My guess is the investigation into this is not looking to discover the truth, it's looking for someone to blame. And the lower they are on the totem pole, the better. If the investigation is an impartial arbiter only concerned with truth and justice, then the guy should cooperate. In the real world, it's probably a kangaroo court that will forget all exculpatory statements and amplify all damaging ones. So if he tells the investigators: "Yeah, I clicked on it, but the message told me it was not a drill, and my manager never advised me there was an ongoing exercise" Then the prosecutor will tell the court: "During questioning he confessed to clicking the button. It's an open-and-shut case, send him to jail!"

nickkell 9y ago

It states in the article the employee made the mistake several times previously.

riffic 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys
candiodari 9y ago
No it doesn't. Besides, that mostly means (we've all seen the interface) that that mistake was made before ... and nobody saw any reason to fix that UI. Mistakes have a cause. Not fixing it will cause repeats.
- krapp 9y ago
  Actually, we haven't seen the interface. What we've seen is a general mockup of the interface, because they wouldn't release an image of it publicly.

scrumper 9y ago

This isn't an argument with your overall point. But your second sentence isn't quite right: "This is not a drill" is part of the alert message itself. If it is a drill, the instruction to issue the alert is prefaced with "EXERCISE EXERCISE EXERCISE." This is from a thing I read yesterday that I can't find now, so I can't back it up I'm afraid. But you see that it isn't quite as you think. (The UX of the system we all saw was truly terrible, but this employee had a track record of making similar mistakes.)

FireBeyond 9y ago
Yes. Or similar. In Fire / EMS, we do training exercises and for anything involving detailed communications any "block" of radio interactions is both started and finished with "This is a training exercise". It's not done with every communication because that would be onerous but each block (typically managed by Dispatch, rather than field personnel). This avoids War of the Worlds style issues too, as our radio traffic is not encrypted and available on scanners.

garblegarble 9y ago

That's exactly what I thought, but then the recent FCC report (quoted at https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hawaii-ema-fires-missile-alert-sender-confusion-over-test-wasnt-new/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hawaii-ema-fires... with the source scanned and available at https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/report2018-01-29-181149.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/repor...) says: >Employee 1 has been a source of concern for the same SWP staff for over 10 years. Employee 1’s poor performance has been counseled and documented and the SWP members have stated that they are “not comfortable with Employee 1 as a supervisor, two-man team, or as a part of the SWP in general. He does not take initiative and has to be directed before he takes action. He is unable to comprehend the situation at hand and has confused real life events and drills on at least two separate occasions.”

candiodari 9y ago
Was that sentence written before or after the event ? Answer: after. So I give it at least 50% that this is scapegoating.