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Who's Controlling Our Vital Information Systems?
HangingChad writes "Gary Lyndaker talks about Janine Wedel's Shadow Elite; about how our information infrastructure is increasingly being sold off to the low bidder. Contracting in state and federal government is rampant, leaving more and more of our nation's vital information in the hands of contractors, many of whom have their own agenda and set of rules. From the article: 'Over 25 years, as an information systems developer, manager, and administrator in both state and private organizations, I have increasingly come to the conclusion that we are putting our state's operations at risk and compromising the trust of the people of our state by outsourcing core government functions.' I've seen the same thing in my years in government IT, ironically much of it as a contractor. My opinion is this is a dangerous trend that needs to be reversed. We're being fleeced while being put at risk."
The Government does not pay all that well (and previously less well). You are talking about large networks, that are very complicated. As a result, you do not have a whole lot of government staff with experience to run a network that is that complicated.
I work in a very small (5K users) government (federal) office. I have to deal with 12 windows domains, 11 Political groups, and offer support to all Regional Admins, and departmental admins - as well as dealing with a help desk which has been told "we don't investigate error logs."
Unfortunately, some of the government staff can't find their ***es with both hands. This is because 12 years ago, the government paid much less than the contractors. Good technical people could earn twice a much contracting a working for the government. Those people are still contracting (mostly), and are the ones that you would want in the government running the show. The people who have "more senior" positions in gvt now? They are largely the ones who couldn't get the better paid contracting jobs, and state: Helpdesk personnel should not be investigating application event logs.
Furthermore, this is also the case for many large businesses: They outsourced the tech support years ago (cheaper); most users get someone in india to change passwords, while sr. staff get concierge service. Those large businesses have similar issues as well: but they have an explicit 2-tier service system.
It's been going on for years, but I don't see any way to rectify it: especially as the job listings still seem to be opaque, and difficult to decode.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has done any number of stories over the past couple of years that indicate IT contractors are significantly more expensive than Wisconsin state employees. The problem (in WI) is that you can find money to hire contract staff build your application; you can't get additional positions to build it. Getting additional positions is almost impossible.
So you pony up money, hire contract staff, and build the application for some factor N greater cost, but you do get your application. Project is completed, contractors go off to their next project in another organization. Then there's no one to maintain the thing. Also remember it was built by people who knew they wouldn't have to maintain it, so it might be crap. It might also be wonderful because taking pride in your work isn't a trait that's confined to permanent staff. I've seen both, but more often the former.
Having state staff build the system means they know they have to maintain it. Usually that results in better quality, but not always. Again, I've seen both, more often than not the staff create something maintainable (if not elegant) because they have to live with the consequences.
[Cue a whole bunch of twits with variations on "but that doesn't make sense" because they think bureaucracies are supposed to make sense.]