Posted on 06/23/2006 8:59:49 PM PDT by Libloather
Wasn't that long ago that a whole lot of government issue credit card numbers were compromised because of lost data disks....by the issuing bank.
Perhaps you are correct. Not outsourcesing is the ultimate answer. But, like I said, feederal agencies are not yet capable of handeling the demand that are NOW. It would be ideal to have everything internal. Unfortunately, change in a federal agency requires time.
Sorry about the typos...I am not a great typist and its late for me.
There are very few mid-levels left who know technical stuff. And because they centralized, you went from agencies who had knowledgable people on staff who knew what was going on, to centralized groups thrown together, who might not know this from that, and the most knowledgable usually had their job positions eliminated, because this was now the job of the private sector contractor.
So you have non-technical upper level management making decisions not based on technical savvy, without knowing the intricacies, overseeing companies who are trying to get by with just enough so it keeps their costs down, and who have very little vested sense of loyalty; the management in charge have little idea what CAN go wrong, and the person who could have told them that when the outlines of the contract were put out no longer works for the agency, and is doing something else with his time.
And to fix it all, through trial and error is going to cost the taxpayers more in the long run, because once the department in an agency is disbanded, well, there's no going back, and the next time the contract is up for bid, the costs will go up because they will have added X, Y, and Z to it (which is because of the mistakes on the first contract), and you will still have the contracts being serviced by people who don't have any sense of loyalty to the agency, and don't really care, and more and more of the few people on board who actually know something and could tell you want was needed or how to deal with problem y are retiring or their positions are being eliminated, and thus management gets blamed.
Diseconomies of scale.
And because of the outsourcing, there are almost no middle-level people coming up through the ranks to replace the upper middle people who will be retiring.
This is just starting to happen.
You might not realize something is wrong until something happens, like a bad wildfire season, where there are not enough management teams to go around.
It will have at least some repercussions.
Three or four years ago they could have done it.
But now the situation is going to be messy, because they've lost too much infrastructure.
But I am reminded about a story about a military base. They had contracted a company to clear the streets when it snowed at this particular base.
One day, it snowed on a Sunday. The general, getting impatient for the snow plows to hit the streets called the contractor.
It wasn't written in the contract for them to work on Sunday.
They did not get their contract renewed.
I know what you mean. I'm a net admin at a hospital, and before we do the most trivial thing we ask, "what would HIPAA do" lol. I spent 2 months doing analysis of internal wire traffic on our network and found lots of openings that have been corrected with stronger encryption. HIPAA has been hell, but has brought about needed changes with regards to how data is handled. If I were a patient I would expect it.
I bet you wouldn't have to dig very far to find a Clintonista at the bottom of this.
Guys - it is past time to do away with the SSN for the military and go back to the old Service Number.
Yes, I do. It's from 1965 and reads: "For Social Security and Tax Purposes-Not for Identification."
"outsourcing data collection and processing activities"
Oh it gets worse than that.
We have Chinese and Indian engineers designing and sourcing critical integrated circuits and other electronics that our weapons systems depend on.
It says, "Not to be used for identification."
Contractors--awarded to the lowest bidder. You get what you pay for.
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