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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."
Yet another reason why the Republican way of thinking is flawed.
This is all they preach "less government, but what government we have we should outsource".
Good thing we outsourced the Atom bomb...
Whoopsiedoodle.
No, it's quite easy to build a top-notch IT organization. Given sufficient funding, there are just a few simple rules to follow:
1) Only hire people trained in first-world Western nations. That basically means just employing Americans, Brits, Japanese, French, Germans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and Scandinavians. Don't bother with anyone else, especially Indians. Their education system does nothing but churn out people who can memorize huge amounts of information, but who cannot apply any of it in a real-world setting.
2) Use hardware from IBM or Sun.
3) Use Oracle or PostgreSQL for database needs. Never use MySQL.
4) Implement software using Java and Python. Never hire Ruby developers, because many have a horrible attitude problem (they consider themselves to be "code ninjas"). Never hire Perl developers, because the code they write is unmaintainable. Never hire PHP developers, because they're fucking morons for using PHP.
5) Run 2) through 4) on Solaris, FreeBSD and Linux.
6) All desktop systems that are deployed run Linux or Mac OS X. This will make administration easy, prevent workers from accidentally installing malware, and keep your job simple.
7) If Windows must be used, it is never on real hardware. Windows is only suitable for use within a virtualized environment that can be discarded at the first sign of a malware infestation. Routinely discard Windows VMs on a weekly basis, replacing them with a known "good" installation.
8) Never hire software architects. These guys can draw pretty pictures, and fuck up your software systems to no end. They'll recommend all sorts of stupid shit that sounds great in theory, but breaks constantly in practice.