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Does the NSA Need More Electricity?
An anonymous reader writes "The Baltimore sun (NSA watchers can't live without it) reports that the NSA worries about overloading the Baltimore energy grid if it were to install new computing capacity at it's Fort Meade HQ. This includes two multi million dollar supercomputers. Some systems are reportedly not getting the cooling they need. The temperature in NSA buildings is raised two degrees to conserve energy, according to the article. The NSA is Baltimore Gas and Electric`s (BGE) biggest customer the sun reports. Former NSA employees fear that a power outage at Fort Meade would have worse consequences than the 2000 "information overload" related outage. The NSA does apparently not have the backup power generation capacity to power the whole facility during power outages. Some point a finger at a new mall build in the area, but a BGE spokesman says the mall is "fairly easily accommodated". Some sources say the problem was identified in the late 90`s. But "keeping the lights on" wasn't a priority. A $4 million computer upgrade to the system that allocates power was postponed for budgetary reasons. (the NSA budged is estimated at $8 Billion) The article reports that the budget documents for listening posts around the world report similar infrastructural problems, in the budgets for 07 as well as previous years. It should be noted that the huge "groundbreaker" IT infrastructure upgrade program is reportedly over budget and late, but not yet fully operational."
there is surplus electricity available from Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
I wonder how much of that electricity is simply wasted on old and inefficient equipment. Government agencies really don't have much incentive to conserve electricity since they know their "bill" will always be paid, regardless of how large it gets....time to upgrade to blades of Turion X2 and/or Core2Duo servers for all that immoral surveillance....
No Such Agency needs that kind of power.
From the outside, we don't really know enough about their problems to suggest a solution. So, clearly the NSA should bring in an unbiased outside consultant, and brief him/her fully on every project that they need to accomodate. As an honest patriot, I am willing to volunteer.
"You've got an awfully big computer plant and a lot of precision equipment, and I don't think they would handle power surges and the like really well," -- WTF?
I've worked on several jobs for credit card companies, as an example, an office with 4,000 workstations. The power was connected to the electric company's grid in two different places from two different substations; in case one of the substations went out, the whole building could be handled from the one still going. All of the servers and almost all of the workstations were connected to a UPS with 15 minutes of batteries AND an emergency generator with 24-hours of fuel. About half of the non-computer loads, including elevators, emergency lights, sump pumps, 1/3 of the occupants air-conditioning, all of the A/C for the server rooms, etc. were connected to the emergency generators. Even the refrigerators and freezers in the cafeteria were on emergency power. And this was for a call center. But a facility upon which our national security supposedly depends can't handle power surges?
With modern networking technology you could put new computers anywhere. So, what's so special about Baltimore? Why not take that shiny new Cray and put it in Cheyenne Mountain, I hear they have room now.
Maybe they should have built their systems near a deep lake, and instead of paying ridiculous prices for AC, they could just pump water from the lake and circulate it. The water at the bottom of lakes is always around 4C, and the cost of pumping it through a radiator type system is relatively very-cheap, reliable, and consistent. It's quite a popular method of cooling near the great-lakes region, I do believe.
"the NSA budged is estimated at $8 Billion"
It costs $8 billion dollars to get the NSA to budge? Give me half that and I'll poke them with a stick until they move.
There wouldn't be a power problem if we'd been allowed to build new plants over the last 20 years.
I live in BGE's service area. Never had a problem, but they've been stressing for years they wanted to build a new power plant and the environmentalists won't let 'em.
Let me fill you suckers in on a little secret. The NSA is run by the Government. The Government doesn't know the meaning of the words efficient or effective. The only government operations which SEEM efficient are the ones they refuse to tell you anything about.
Realize that much of what is classified is classified to cover someone's ass, and not due to national security concerns. Imagine if your company could classify information it didn't want people to know about, what would they classify? All the bad news, that's what. Notice that any and all bad news coming out of the government is directly from employees to the press, and never EVER from officials or press relations offices.
Now you know that the NSA can't even figure out how to get electricity set up so that they can power their billion dollar computers, meanwhile your company, which you consider to be run by dopes probably, has multiple plans to deal with such issues. The reason for this is simple:
The NSA does not design computers, they just buy them on contract from big companies like IBM or whoever. All they have to do is write a check.
This leaves the NSA with the responsibility to plug that computer in, and they have failed at it. And you can take it as a fact that this is the case with almost all government projects. They write a check to a contractor, and then don't have the competence to use what they bought.
"We" want a corruption free, fair government.
No, seriously. As someone who has worked in government procurement before, you would be absolutely amazed to see all of the nonsense the USG must go through - according to law - to purchase anything beyond small office supplies (and heaven help you if you need to purchase those in bulk).
A few examples:
- It took one month to have a lock changed. Not a lock at a secure facility or anything of the sort, mind you, and preparing the paperwork to create the order form and see that it had all the necessary approvals cost more than changing the stupid lock. But don't worry - that lock was changed without any corruption at all.
- Time to wait for a request for most small items (purchases below $2,500) is at least a month, usually 6 weeks. If it is above $2,500 (and, no, you cannot purchase items individually if it's above that amount - they all have to be on the same PO), at least three bids must be made from different companies and if it is a piece of technical equipment, committees must be formed so that everyone can sit around and argue about what their requirements are for a few months rather than making the process quick. If you're buying a lot of new computers, expect a lag of several months - or a year.
- Let's not even get into the various acts that, on top of that, prevent the government from buying from certain entities, encourage it to purchase from others (minorities, women owned businesses, etc.), and the other groups the government creates to "streamline" ordering that do nothing more than add an additional step to the process.
(Above was with the State dept. - your mileage may vary)
The simple fact is that the government cannot act like an efficient, effective corporation and simply purchase stuff because it has been buried in red tape. Why is it buried? "We" buried it. By "we", I mean American citizens, but especially their elected officials.
Americans taxpayers, reasonably, don't want to pay taxes into a government that is corrupt and practices cronyism. This makes sense and, in spite of all the cynical things you hear on Slashdot, it must be noted that the U.S. government has very low corruption levels when compared to others, and we generally do hold those who break the law accountable for it. However, this (very) relatively corruption-free government comes at a high price - efficiency. An honest employee who needs to get his or her hands on equipment quickly simply can't do it - it must be passed through miles and miles of red tape first. Legislators always love to jump on these little matters when they com up, pound their desks, and demand something be done to stop it, which leads to yet more red tape.
It's a sad, sad day when a purchase must pass through the hands of at least 5 very busy people (and often pass through their hands more than once) to get approval. But that's what I saw.
I left asking myself - is it worth allowing a little corruption to avoid wasting billions a year in administrative fees? I'm not sure I could give that question a qualified "yes", but sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease.
**** NOT opening a can of beans here, so don't even start ****
After seeing how the government does things with purchasing as an intern, I can almost understand the no-bid contracts with Haliburton. Just the bidding process on these contracts would've taken YEARS, and not met the policymakers' desired timeline (which you can see as right or wrong).
**** NOT opening a can of beans here, so don't even start ****
funny how "anonymous coward" supports not hiding.
Funny how the real parent, noit hiding behind anonymous exposes some facts and gets rated flaim bait.
And this proves what? That the original parent is correct!
In that it corrects some of my mistakes, and I appreciate your comments.
I neglected to mention that my particular experience was in an embassy. Most of the administrative personnel are not American citizens, which means the USG is a bit leary about handing out cards to them. There were only a handful of American personnel running the Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs), and these Americans were very busy in other areas and weren't the type of personnel you ask to make small purchases.
Regarding GSA - we made big orders through them, but only once every quarter/six months or so (don't recall specifics). Shipping big pallets like that from the U.S. can get expensive, and between time it takes to make the purchase order, assemble the pallet, ship it to post, clear customs, etc. it can take months.
My experience will obviously vary from that of many federal employees.
I've never found anyone with clearance to be shy about it. I know three people with an active clearance, one with secret, two with top secret. Those really are the only two levels of clearence. TS is divided in to some controlling keywords, but it's the same basic idea. In either case you are given access only to what you need to know. It's not like the guys with TS clearence know all the government secrets, they know only want relivant to their area.
None of them have ever been shy about the fact they are cleared. It's not like they shout it out as though it's a badge of pride, but if you ask they'll tell you. Generally, you can guess from their jobs they have clearance. They work on things that are, well, secret. They can tell you their general area of work, but not the specifics.
That some group would go around kidnapping all the people with clearance is rather unlikely. There are a whole lot of them and the government would take rather violent exception to that.