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The idea that he could fix Air Force IT in 6 months if empowered seems absolutely ridiculous given the size of the organization. What do you think the US gov n

by enkid 5y ago

The idea that he could fix Air Force IT in 6 months if empowered seems absolutely ridiculous given the size of the organization. What do you think the US gov needs to change to get better at it?

tyingq 5y ago
He did mention that's it's frustrating that officers put in charge of IT work have no IT experience. That's not true for many other specialties in the military, where the officers will have extensive experience in the area they are leading. Doesn't solve anything by itself, but it would help.
- Pokepokalypse 5y ago
  The fact is: you can't wave a magic wand, and suddenly crap out a person with high-level experience in these very young tools, who also happens to have officer-level rank in the USAF (or at the very least: experience with satisfying the operational and compliance requirements in this industry). I have no doubt such people exist. But not in the numbers that would be needed. It will take years or decades of focused effort to build that workforce.
  - mpyne 5y ago
    Exactly right, but the military services haven't even started to implement the changes that would be needed to grow and maintain a cadre of digital talent. Fred Brooks (a name some of you might recognize) recommended in a 1987 report for Defense Science Board on problems with DoD software that DoD needed to improve its uniformed and government software expertise. Even there he said such personnel would likely have to be heavily supplemented by contractor help -- but at least they'd know how to do the technical management. Fast forward 30+ years and there are pockets of talent but if anything the problems are larger as digital products have become more important to business operations around the world. Recent example from Reddit on DoD IT: https://i.redd.it/dyp2nyaca5l71.jpg https://i.redd.it/dyp2nyaca5l71.jpg
  - tyingq 5y ago
    No, but they aren't even trying. They treat it as a generalist post. There are scholarships for pilots, nuclear engineers, and so on that place them in specific jobs in the military. That's something they could start now for IT.
Pokepokalypse 5y ago
I've seen much smaller organizations fail to adopt "DevOps"; pretty much textbook against the recent "Puppet yearly state of Devops report": cultural issues, and legacy software. It boils down to the organization SAYING they want to make this transition, and not doing what's necessary to change. "Sufficiently empowered" is a nice blanket term, but it's not always that easy. At my previous job, the "cultural" issue was specifically 3 individuals, who were highly placed in the organization, and they were #1, #3 and #5 employees from when the company was originally a startup. Nobody, not even the CEO, was "sufficiently empowered" to tell these fully-vested founders how to do their job or run their teams. When it came down to it. And they prevented a company of 500 others from succeeding at changing how they did the work. Now; we did hire a very good devops-oriented cloud architect, who was making a lot of progress, despite the resistance, and he may actually succeed (keyword: "strangler pattern"), but they're already 5 years into this effort. So; indeed, the size of the USAF, AND all the contractor developers they depend on, and the command-structure of this combined "organization"; I wouldn't want to contemplate the level of "sufficiently empowered" that would be required to change that in 6 months. You'd have to summarily fire a LOT of people, and magically find skilled replacements, and then magically overcome the knowledge gap, while maintaining operational readiness for warfighters.

by enkid 5y ago

The idea that he could fix Air Force IT in 6 months if empowered seems absolutely ridiculous given the size of the organization. What do you think the US gov needs to change to get better at it?

tyingq 5y ago

He did mention that's it's frustrating that officers put in charge of IT work have no IT experience. That's not true for many other specialties in the military, where the officers will have extensive experience in the area they are leading. Doesn't solve anything by itself, but it would help.

Pokepokalypse 5y ago
The fact is: you can't wave a magic wand, and suddenly crap out a person with high-level experience in these very young tools, who also happens to have officer-level rank in the USAF (or at the very least: experience with satisfying the operational and compliance requirements in this industry). I have no doubt such people exist. But not in the numbers that would be needed. It will take years or decades of focused effort to build that workforce.
- mpyne 5y ago
  Exactly right, but the military services haven't even started to implement the changes that would be needed to grow and maintain a cadre of digital talent. Fred Brooks (a name some of you might recognize) recommended in a 1987 report for Defense Science Board on problems with DoD software that DoD needed to improve its uniformed and government software expertise. Even there he said such personnel would likely have to be heavily supplemented by contractor help -- but at least they'd know how to do the technical management. Fast forward 30+ years and there are pockets of talent but if anything the problems are larger as digital products have become more important to business operations around the world. Recent example from Reddit on DoD IT: https://i.redd.it/dyp2nyaca5l71.jpg https://i.redd.it/dyp2nyaca5l71.jpg
- tyingq 5y ago
  No, but they aren't even trying. They treat it as a generalist post. There are scholarships for pilots, nuclear engineers, and so on that place them in specific jobs in the military. That's something they could start now for IT.

Pokepokalypse 5y ago

I've seen much smaller organizations fail to adopt "DevOps"; pretty much textbook against the recent "Puppet yearly state of Devops report": cultural issues, and legacy software. It boils down to the organization SAYING they want to make this transition, and not doing what's necessary to change. "Sufficiently empowered" is a nice blanket term, but it's not always that easy. At my previous job, the "cultural" issue was specifically 3 individuals, who were highly placed in the organization, and they were #1, #3 and #5 employees from when the company was originally a startup. Nobody, not even the CEO, was "sufficiently empowered" to tell these fully-vested founders how to do their job or run their teams. When it came down to it. And they prevented a company of 500 others from succeeding at changing how they did the work. Now; we did hire a very good devops-oriented cloud architect, who was making a lot of progress, despite the resistance, and he may actually succeed (keyword: "strangler pattern"), but they're already 5 years into this effort. So; indeed, the size of the USAF, AND all the contractor developers they depend on, and the command-structure of this combined "organization"; I wouldn't want to contemplate the level of "sufficiently empowered" that would be required to change that in 6 months. You'd have to summarily fire a LOT of people, and magically find skilled replacements, and then magically overcome the knowledge gap, while maintaining operational readiness for warfighters.