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Article: The platform, known as NATO’s Service-Oriented Architecture and Identity Access Management (SOA & IdM) Project, is one of four core projects of NATO's

Article: The platform, known as NATO’s Service-Oriented Architecture and Identity Access Management (SOA & IdM) Project, is one of four core projects of NATO's IT modernization efforts. So this expresses what "modernization" is - fob as much work as possible unto a job-shop/meat-grinder operation and watch things like this happen. I don't even know whether to laugh or be appalled, the Snowden leaks happened due to contracted-out sys admins, after all.

flatline 5y ago
Nearly everyone who does real work like this for the government is a contractor anymore. The government employees manage the contracts.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > The government employees manage the contracts. How long before that's outsourced to Accenture too?
  - nerbert 5y ago
    No no, the companies executing the contracts are the experts, they know what’s best to put in them. It comes as free consult. Edit: if only this was a joke.
- jvanderbot 5y ago
  "Industry can handle it better"
- dragonelite 5y ago
  paying double if not triple if they would be internal worker.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  Sure, the states of the world have decided that security isn't one of their core competencies - computer security, yes, but the point remains. I find this mind-boggling but that's how it is.
- noobermin 5y ago
  It really is one of the dumbest things in government work. Politicians want to "shrink government" so they don't want many actual employees that would probably be well paid, stable, but someone needs to do the work. Thus, enter the I-too-want-to-shrink-the-government politicians who agree but then farm it out to contractors, some whom they might work for one day (or even come from in some cases in the US!). And so the actual government employees are few and far in between while everything else is farmed out to contractors, some who are good and many who do fly by night jobs on grants and have no incentive to do better otherwise.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    It is also nice to have an entity to throw under the bus if necessary.
    - eru 5y ago
      And that's actually a benefit for the tax payer! It's notoriously hard to fire public servants, or shut down underperforming departments. It's comparatively easier to shut down an outsourced project, or switch suppliers. (Alas, not easy enough; and the organizational skills required to win government bids are different from those required to actually deliver quality.)
  - eru 5y ago
    Do you think projects run and implemented by people directly employed by the government have a better track record?
    - noobermin 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
      - chha 5y ago
        Not sure what you're trying to say with this. The Apollo program was run by NASA, who had lots of government employees, but at the same time all the hardware and much of the software was built by contractors. The Apollo program was behind schedule and over budget for most of the project period. NASA originally estimated the cost to somewhere between 7 and 12 billion USD; NASA Administrator increased this to 20 billion USD in 1961, but it ended up costing more than 25 billion USD in 1973 dollars.
- hereforphone 5y ago
  Exactly. They also get the credit and retirement checks.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  I'm a government employee. I work with a few dozen people across multiple locations doing actual work. Not one of us is a contractor. Zero contactors are involved in any real work. The few we have are in support positions. We have some contracted IT people who manage some of our computer systems but don't have any access to what those computers actually do. We have contacted security guards at the front gate. And I think the cleaners are contracted out but as they have NEVER cleaned my office I don't see them much. I think there is some observational bias going on in this thread.
  - JackFr 5y ago
    When I was a defense contractor it always struck me as weird that the guardhouse at USMC HQ at the Navy Annex was staffed by $12/hr private security guards. On the other hand the commander of the group I was doing work for pointed out that a fully trained Marine private was far to costly an asset to waste checking visitor ids.
leto_ii 5y ago
> the Snowden leaks happened due to contracted-out sys admins, after all But that's a good thing, right? It's good that everybody found out that the government unlawfully collected their data etc. Snowden was not an attacker asking for money, he was an honest guy with a conscience and a whole lot of courage.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  It's good and bad. The bad news is they're evil, but the good news is they're incompetent. That's better than competent evil, but I'd prefer competent good.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Who can be good in a position of power? Arguably, "power corrupts" as the saying goes. I believe you could take the 500 best person on Earth to try and form the perfect parliament, and you'd still have an unjust system. Abolishing the structures of domination/exploitation is the only way to have a good outcome, because it's the only way to ensure citizens will behave as decent neighbors, and not try to control and manipulate their peers. At least, that's what we anarchists believe and practice on a daily basis.
  - leto_ii 5y ago
    > The bad news is they're evil Agreed, but this is really bad news, given the amount of power three letter agencies (and the deep state in general) have. > the good news is they're incompetent Here I disagree. I think the NSA are about as competent as such an agency is ever likely to get. We shouldn't be happy that they still have weaknesses, rather we should be horrified at how few of them there are. Most of the spying programs had been in place years before Snowden blew the whistle. Countless other contractors and deep state employees could have done what Snowden did had they had either the courage or the moral clarity. Quite possibly many tried and were stopped before leaking to the public.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  Wow you didn't know about surveillance before the terrorist Snowden's revelations? I envy you for your youth and blissful naivety let me guess Assange blew your *MIND* when he exposed a civilian death in Iraq? Hence your pro terrorist stance?
orbifold 5y ago
In Germany this kind of task would land in the lap of T-Systems, SAP (who already do logistics / storage management and probably more for the Army) or one of these consultancies Delloite. You can't expect politicians to be competent.
hereforphone 5y ago
I contracted for US government agencies for a long time. At every single job the contractors were doing the "work" (they had the knowledge) and the government employees were acting as managers. I have not met a government employee with an unusually high level of technical skill (though obviously many do exist). As far as I can tell (and I worked over a decade in this environment, in many countries) government employees exist to attend meetings and task contractors.
- karlmdavis 5y ago
  Technical government employee here. :waves: Your observation is, in general, quite correct! Back in the 80s or thereabouts, the conservative administrations started a MASSIVE shift towards outsourcing of federal government work. This was for all of the usual, largely shortsighted and inaccurate “cost saving” and “efficiency” reasons. The worst part of it is that they outsourced ALL of the technical expertise in many agencies, leaving them without the expertise needed to effectively manage the work being outsourced. This is starting to shift, thanks to recent efforts like the USDS, 18F, and such but it’s the work of decades to really change. Come join us!
  - cafard 5y ago
    Former employee of a government contractor here. Contracting worked on the Charlie Sheen principle: don't pay them to come around, pay them to leave. Also, it is a much more efficient way to distribute patronage.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  That would be the plan. If it is a government contract then the government is the customer. The customer manages the project and the hired contractors do the heavy lifting. Look to the people who actually use these systems. Once it is up and running they will all be government employees. The real work, the thing the system is designed to do, starts after the IT infrastructure is up and running. The vast majority of people reading and handling classified informatiom are government employees ... most of them in uniform. FYI, this system is apparently mean to protect "NATO Secret" material. That isnt a very high classification. I'd call it entry level, the sort of thing that nearly everyone in uniform is cleared to see.
raxxorrax 5y ago
So you mean there are positive sides to it? Might also be true in this case since I believe they would host surveillance data on citizens.
zcw100 5y ago
Robert Hanssen was a government employee after all. It's incredibly naive to think that your employer makes any difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

flatline 5y ago

Nearly everyone who does real work like this for the government is a contractor anymore. The government employees manage the contracts.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> The government employees manage the contracts. How long before that's outsourced to Accenture too?
- nerbert 5y ago
  No no, the companies executing the contracts are the experts, they know what’s best to put in them. It comes as free consult. Edit: if only this was a joke.
jvanderbot 5y ago
"Industry can handle it better"
dragonelite 5y ago
paying double if not triple if they would be internal worker.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Sure, the states of the world have decided that security isn't one of their core competencies - computer security, yes, but the point remains. I find this mind-boggling but that's how it is.
noobermin 5y ago
It really is one of the dumbest things in government work. Politicians want to "shrink government" so they don't want many actual employees that would probably be well paid, stable, but someone needs to do the work. Thus, enter the I-too-want-to-shrink-the-government politicians who agree but then farm it out to contractors, some whom they might work for one day (or even come from in some cases in the US!). And so the actual government employees are few and far in between while everything else is farmed out to contractors, some who are good and many who do fly by night jobs on grants and have no incentive to do better otherwise.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  It is also nice to have an entity to throw under the bus if necessary.
  - eru 5y ago
    And that's actually a benefit for the tax payer! It's notoriously hard to fire public servants, or shut down underperforming departments. It's comparatively easier to shut down an outsourced project, or switch suppliers. (Alas, not easy enough; and the organizational skills required to win government bids are different from those required to actually deliver quality.)
- eru 5y ago
  Do you think projects run and implemented by people directly employed by the government have a better track record?
  - noobermin 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
    - chha 5y ago
      Not sure what you're trying to say with this. The Apollo program was run by NASA, who had lots of government employees, but at the same time all the hardware and much of the software was built by contractors. The Apollo program was behind schedule and over budget for most of the project period. NASA originally estimated the cost to somewhere between 7 and 12 billion USD; NASA Administrator increased this to 20 billion USD in 1961, but it ended up costing more than 25 billion USD in 1973 dollars.
hereforphone 5y ago
Exactly. They also get the credit and retirement checks.
sandworm101 5y ago
I'm a government employee. I work with a few dozen people across multiple locations doing actual work. Not one of us is a contractor. Zero contactors are involved in any real work. The few we have are in support positions. We have some contracted IT people who manage some of our computer systems but don't have any access to what those computers actually do. We have contacted security guards at the front gate. And I think the cleaners are contracted out but as they have NEVER cleaned my office I don't see them much. I think there is some observational bias going on in this thread.
- JackFr 5y ago
  When I was a defense contractor it always struck me as weird that the guardhouse at USMC HQ at the Navy Annex was staffed by $12/hr private security guards. On the other hand the commander of the group I was doing work for pointed out that a fully trained Marine private was far to costly an asset to waste checking visitor ids.

leto_ii 5y ago

> the Snowden leaks happened due to contracted-out sys admins, after all But that's a good thing, right? It's good that everybody found out that the government unlawfully collected their data etc. Snowden was not an attacker asking for money, he was an honest guy with a conscience and a whole lot of courage.

ALittleLight 5y ago
It's good and bad. The bad news is they're evil, but the good news is they're incompetent. That's better than competent evil, but I'd prefer competent good.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Who can be good in a position of power? Arguably, "power corrupts" as the saying goes. I believe you could take the 500 best person on Earth to try and form the perfect parliament, and you'd still have an unjust system. Abolishing the structures of domination/exploitation is the only way to have a good outcome, because it's the only way to ensure citizens will behave as decent neighbors, and not try to control and manipulate their peers. At least, that's what we anarchists believe and practice on a daily basis.
- leto_ii 5y ago
  > The bad news is they're evil Agreed, but this is really bad news, given the amount of power three letter agencies (and the deep state in general) have. > the good news is they're incompetent Here I disagree. I think the NSA are about as competent as such an agency is ever likely to get. We shouldn't be happy that they still have weaknesses, rather we should be horrified at how few of them there are. Most of the spying programs had been in place years before Snowden blew the whistle. Countless other contractors and deep state employees could have done what Snowden did had they had either the courage or the moral clarity. Quite possibly many tried and were stopped before leaking to the public.
dr-detroit 5y ago
Wow you didn't know about surveillance before the terrorist Snowden's revelations? I envy you for your youth and blissful naivety let me guess Assange blew your *MIND* when he exposed a civilian death in Iraq? Hence your pro terrorist stance?

orbifold 5y ago

In Germany this kind of task would land in the lap of T-Systems, SAP (who already do logistics / storage management and probably more for the Army) or one of these consultancies Delloite. You can't expect politicians to be competent.

hereforphone 5y ago

I contracted for US government agencies for a long time. At every single job the contractors were doing the "work" (they had the knowledge) and the government employees were acting as managers. I have not met a government employee with an unusually high level of technical skill (though obviously many do exist). As far as I can tell (and I worked over a decade in this environment, in many countries) government employees exist to attend meetings and task contractors.

karlmdavis 5y ago
Technical government employee here. :waves: Your observation is, in general, quite correct! Back in the 80s or thereabouts, the conservative administrations started a MASSIVE shift towards outsourcing of federal government work. This was for all of the usual, largely shortsighted and inaccurate “cost saving” and “efficiency” reasons. The worst part of it is that they outsourced ALL of the technical expertise in many agencies, leaving them without the expertise needed to effectively manage the work being outsourced. This is starting to shift, thanks to recent efforts like the USDS, 18F, and such but it’s the work of decades to really change. Come join us!
- cafard 5y ago
  Former employee of a government contractor here. Contracting worked on the Charlie Sheen principle: don't pay them to come around, pay them to leave. Also, it is a much more efficient way to distribute patronage.
sandworm101 5y ago
That would be the plan. If it is a government contract then the government is the customer. The customer manages the project and the hired contractors do the heavy lifting. Look to the people who actually use these systems. Once it is up and running they will all be government employees. The real work, the thing the system is designed to do, starts after the IT infrastructure is up and running. The vast majority of people reading and handling classified informatiom are government employees ... most of them in uniform. FYI, this system is apparently mean to protect "NATO Secret" material. That isnt a very high classification. I'd call it entry level, the sort of thing that nearly everyone in uniform is cleared to see.

raxxorrax 5y ago

So you mean there are positive sides to it? Might also be true in this case since I believe they would host surveillance data on citizens.

zcw100 5y ago

Robert Hanssen was a government employee after all. It's incredibly naive to think that your employer makes any difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen