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For starters, only 1/2 of the interior is shut off. USGS, the Park Service and others are up. The Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Indian affairs (duh), the Bureau of Land Management, and some other offices are down.

The judge's order is archived
here

The kicker pages that say what Interior must do are pp. 26-29. The order does outline some intrusion attempts that were successful at parts of Interior.

The Plantiff's site gives an overview of the case--it's written by the Indian Plantiff, so it's biased, but still pretty accurate.

Background: this is all about trust fund monies that in the late 1800's the U.S. Government said to Indian tribes: "We'll manage the monies that are made from drilling, mining, etc. your reservation land. Trust Us! PS: You don't have a choice." Then, the Gov't took the money and said buzz off to the Indians. In the 1990's, some Indians sue, and say where's our money -- Interior says, I dunno.

Is the judge vindictive -- probably. But it's not that different from Hanging Judge Jackson in the MS Anti-Trust case -- the judge may be pissed off, but he's got that way from years of dealing with the incompetence of Interior.

M

For starters, only 1/2 of the interior is shut off. USGS, the Park Service and others are up. The Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Indian affairs (duh), the Bureau of Land Management, and some other offices are down.

The judge's order is archived
here

The kicker pages that say what Interior must do are pp. 26-29. The order does outline some intrusion attempts that were successful at parts of Interior.

The Plantiff's site gives an overview of the case--it's written by the Indian Plantiff, so it's biased, but still pretty accurate.

Background: this is all about trust fund monies that in the late 1800's the U.S. Government said to Indian tribes: "We'll manage the monies that are made from drilling, mining, etc. your reservation land. Trust Us! PS: You don't have a choice." Then, the Gov't took the money and said buzz off to the Indians. In the 1990's, some Indians sue, and say where's our money -- Interior says, I dunno.

Is the judge vindictive -- probably. But it's not that different from Hanging Judge Jackson in the MS Anti-Trust case -- the judge may be pissed off, but he's got that way from years of dealing with the incompetence of Interior.

M

in PDF format at the plantiff's website. It'll tell you all you ever wanted to know about the events that led up to yesterday's decision. There's some good zingers towards the end.

It's a lawsuit over the Indian Trust Funds that's been going on for 7 years now. The plaintiffs are a couple of Indians from various tribes. Cobell vs. Dept. of Interior. http://www.indiantrust.com has a summary of what's been going on.

Observation: The majority of contractors doing business with the government are incompetent to program their way out of a boot prompt. They view government work as a way to suck on the government teat, and they stretch it out as long as possible so that they can continue sucking on the government teat. The end result is usually a project that's 100 times more expensive than doing it in-house, and potentially a project that never works. For example, the contractor that the Interior Department hired to fix the Indian trust system has so far spent over $500,000,000 to create a trust computer system that doesn't work -- something that I could have done with a small highly focused team for under $5,000,000, *INCLUDING DEPLOYMENT*.

A government employee, on the other hand, has no incentive to drag the project out. He gets paid the same whether the project is finished or not, so he might as well finish it so he can get some free time to lean on his shovel (grin). Virtually every worthwhile piece of software that has ever come out of government was created by government employees, not by contractors. The contractors are invariably political hacks who get the job by wining and dining the right bureaucrats, rather than by producing a better product for a better price.

Story: I was at a (government) customer site doing a computer survey so we could do a quote. The IT director kept asking me about computer systems at home. Finally, it dawned on me that what he was asking was whether we were going to pay a bribe -- give the IT director and his top staff free computers for their homes. I kept on pretending I wasn't understanding, and let the boss know. He didn't pay the bribe. We didn't get the contract, despite having the low bid.

The next contract, he had learned his lesson. The right palms got greased, and we got the contract.

That, my friend, is how government contracting works, and why outsourcing rarely produces cost savings for government. (Au contraire, virtually every study shows that outsourcing increases costs of providing government services). For example, in my home city of Scottsdale, Arizona, our fire service is currently provided by Rural/Metro Fire and Ambulance. Proponents of ending the city's contract with Rural/Metro have shown that the city can reduce costs by 10%, while providing better service, by instead going to a city-owned fire department like most of the surrounding cities. This conclusion was arrived at by examining the costs of surrounding cities' fire departments compared to what Scottsdale is paying Rural/Metro. The biggest thing was the amount of profit that Rural/Metro makes off of Scottsdale... thus the 10% cost savings from using government employees rather than contractors to provide fire service. The City of Gilbert, once they kicked out Rural/Metro, for example, is *STILL* paying less than they would have paid Rural/Metro if they'd continued their Rural/Metro contract.

Note that many of these arguments apply to *any* outsourcing that isn't tightly overseen by competent people, not just outsourcing by government. It's just that government outsourcing is uniquely suited to this sort of corruption, because the employee doesn't have to worry about driving his employer into bankruptcy -- when was the last time you saw a government go bankrupt?

-E

There's a such thing as penny wise, pound foolish.

Now, this isn't to say that there aren't good direct hires from India. There certainly are. Many of the issues I have with Indian programmers are actually generic problems with all contracting firms -- i.e., the fact that they represent their employees as having more skills than they actually have, and charge the client for improving the skill set of their employees. It's just coincidence that most of those contracting firms hire large numbers of Indian programmers... their quality would be equally shitty even if they were hiring Americans. Hell, the Department of Interior has so far spent $500 million on a trust management computer system that does *NOT* work, and I could have done the same thing with less than $5,000,000 total budget INCLUDING the actual deployment. But the consulting firm had no incentive to ever actually finish the system, not when they could continue milking the government teat... not that this behavior is confined to government work. One of the reasons K-Mart had to declare bankruptcy was a failed IT deployment by one of the Big Name consulting firms back in the 90's...

For anyone not familiar with the DOI Indian trust fiasco, here are some quotes from various news stories.

the third Cabinet-level officer to be held in contempt

10 to 40 billion in missing funds

Some of the money was stolen or used for other federal programs... Thousands of the accounts have money but no names attached.

the government had no idea where to send the Indians' money, billions had just gone into the federal treasury, reducing the national debt

stop the government from shredding documents

agency officials failed to carry out court orders or covered up failures

The ruling ... found the two officials had "committed a fraud upon the court"

accounts have been mismanaged, the government acknowledges

Federal Judge Royce Lamberth has decried the government's "egregious misconduct

Department of Interior once hired the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen

Sue Ellen Wooldridge, deputy chief of staff for Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, discussed her qualifications for the job... she was uniquely qualified in one respect: She was the only appointee who had ever castrated a sheep -- with her teeth.

-

Lots of information is available at the Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton web site. Press releases plus offical court documents.

Of particular interest is this document, which more fully explains why the judge ordered all Internet access to the Department of Interior. Apparently, court investigators were able to break in and modify lots of important information without any response from the DoI.

Seems like this sets a legal precendence for locking down an entire business, organization, or corporation involved in a legal situation. If it can be demonstrated that it would be possible for an outside entity to modify data crucial to the proceeding of the case (such data would be subpeonaed), the judge can order all external access to that data cut off.

Since simply running a some Microsoft software makes it possible for a large number of outside entities to modify such data without difficulty, and to know that doing so is possible without having to figure it out, I could see this becoming a problem for businesses and organizations that run said Microsoft software.

However, it also means that lax UNIX administrators could have their systems' access cut off if court investigators demonstrate that they are able to get in. Sounds like Mac OS 9 is the best protection against this now.

Lots of information is available at the Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton web site. Press releases plus offical court documents.

Of particular interest is this document, which more fully explains why the judge ordered all Internet access to the Department of Interior. Apparently, court investigators were able to break in and modify lots of important information without any response from the DoI.

Seems like this sets a legal precendence for locking down an entire business, organization, or corporation involved in a legal situation. If it can be demonstrated that it would be possible for an outside entity to modify data crucial to the proceeding of the case (such data would be subpeonaed), the judge can order all external access to that data cut off.

Since simply running a some Microsoft software makes it possible for a large number of outside entities to modify such data without difficulty, and to know that doing so is possible without having to figure it out, I could see this becoming a problem for businesses and organizations that run said Microsoft software.

However, it also means that lax UNIX administrators could have their systems' access cut off if court investigators demonstrate that they are able to get in. Sounds like Mac OS 9 is the best protection against this now.