Fed Goes Hunting For Malcontents

snydeq writes "The wake of State Department document leaks to WikiLeaks may have the unhappy rousted from government agencies' 'privileged insiders' ranks, thanks to a recent memo from the US OMB asking agencies to spell out their strategies for minimizing insider risk. 'It's likely that federal contractors and government suppliers will also find themselves responding to this list of questions (PDF) and the central issue of preventing the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified materials. In a key section of the memo, the OMB requests information on whether organizations are measuring the "trustworthiness" of their employees and whether they use a psychiatrist or sociologist to measure the unhappiness of an employee as a measure of trustworthiness.'"

Comments

White House Plumbers?

[dkleinsc]

It's not like this sort of thing hasn't been tried before. I'm sure it will work about as well now as it did then.

Re:White House Plumbers?

[Ihmhi]

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, our government entities seem to think other factors must be taken into consideration and other strategies often have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buy a stronger whip.

2. Change riders.

3. Threaten the horse with termination.

4. Appoint a committee to study the horse.

5. Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

6. Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included.

7. Appoint an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.

8. Create a training session to increase the rider’s load share.

9. Reclassify the dead horse as “living impaired”.

10. Change the form so that it reads “This horse is not dead.”

11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.

13. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.

14. Provide additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.

15. Do a time-management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.

16. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.

17. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.

18. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.

19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.

20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Bad Idea

[Advocatus Diaboli]

Governing systems without implicit trust of the vast majority of its employees are disasters waiting to happen.

Happiness is mandatory

[Lazareth]

Insufficient happiness will be punished by termination.

Ignore the real problem

[sheepofblue]

They are ignoring the real problem. Why did this guy have access to all of that? Why was the data not walled off some? Seems he had the ability to access and download data that was irrelevant for his job and THAT was the issue that made this such a problem.

Re:Ignore the real problem

[space_jake]

The thought the real problem was they did some shit they didn't want people to find out about and then buried it. Sounds like the solution to the problem is, don't be a douche.

Ob AI Koan

[rlp]

A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal.

"I would like to give you this personality test" said the outsider, "because I wish you to be happy."

Drescher took the paper that was offered to him and put it in the toaster, saying "I wish the toaster to be happy, too."

Hahaha! Cue the witch hunt in 5, 4, 3, 2 ....

[erroneus]

"Malcontents" are bred and created through bad, illegal, immoral or otherwise questionable behavior of players in government industry. That's why we call them "whistle blowers" when the public needs to know. They aren't "whistle blowers" when you seek to get rid of them though... they are malcontents, party-poopers or even "terrorists!"

This is and will be a witch hunt, however. Well meaning people who believe in the function and purpose of our government who haven't yet accepted that there is corruption beyond repair, are now to be pursued, persecuted and ejected from public service to better ensure that their dirty games can continue uninterrupted.

unhappiness != untrustworthy

[confused one]

[rant mode on]: Just because I'm unhappy, this does not make me untrustworthy. I trade on my experience, work ethic and reputation. I DO NOT violate trust. Not because I think I'm grossly underpaid. Not because I don't agree with my management. Not when I'm having a bad day. Not ever. This is an unrealistic measure that's likely going to unintentionaly bite good people in the ass.[rant mode off]

Re:unhappiness != untrustworthy

[ultranova]

I DO NOT violate trust.

What will you do if, while working for the government, you come up with evidence of highly illegal activities by your higher-ups? You'll either publish the evidence and violate their trust, or not publish and thus help cover their crimes, thus violating the trust of the public who ultimately pay your paycheck.

Not violating trust is a fine principle, but it also allows corruption to continue unhindered. It also allows corporations to kill people through neglect like BP did. It allowed the Catholic Church to keep on protecting pdeophile priests for decades and pretend that this was a good thing. Or, to stop beating around the bush, it allowed Nazi death camps to operate despite every participant knowing perfectly well - judging by their own letters - that they were doing a horrible, vile thing.

Every organization needs people who are ready to betray it. Otherwise there's nothing stopping it from rotting to the very core.

odd...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the REAL problem was that the government is violating its own laws/treaties, lying to its citizens, etc...

I do agree, though, that going on a witch hunt for people who MIGHT not "go along w/the program" is definitely ignoring the real problem...

Disgruntled != Unhappy

[timeOday]

The normal word to use in this context is "disgruntled." Disgruntled employees are security risks because they may be out for revenge. No, that wouldn't include somebody unhappy because of a death in the family - unless I guess they were so distraught as to be demonstrably unhinged.

Obviously the summary (and the story) use the word "unhappy" to make it seem (more?) unreasonable than it is, as usual.

Re:Doesn't Figure

[ultranova]

Someone who expresses unhappiness with government policies is likely to be security risk when it comes to government secrets. Conceptually, this is not a bad idea.

Yes, it is. It means that someone who is unhappy will simply hide his opinions, which of course gives him more reasons to be unhappy: "I'll be fired if I don't toe the party line! I'm being oppressed!" And of course he's quite right, whether his original problem had any basis in reality or not. This means that not only does this not solve the problem, but will actually make it worse, as well as puts a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

Yet another bright idea from our brave leaders worthy of a Dilbert Award.

Re:Happy Workers!

[PopeRatzo]

"The problem mainly seems to be dissatisfaction with the government"

Tell them to stop spending so much time watching Fox News.

Re:That's not what this is

[Hatta]

And what are they going to do when they find unhappy employees? Are they going to find out why they are unhappy and see what they are going to do to help? Or are they going to fire them? If it's the latter, then we've got unhappy employees with an incentive to lie to keep their jobs. Now you *can't* trust your employees anymore.