What Silicon Valley Can Do For Homeland Security 120
An anonymous reader writes "Small, agile development firms are just what security in the United States needs, argues an article on Ars Technica. The piece compares the processes used in small Silicon Valley firms to those used in security contractors retained by the U.S. Government. Mr. Stokes' conclusion? The U.S. has a lot to learn from small companies." From the."
Small Firms? (Score:2, Funny)
Call me, Uncle Sam... I can help consult on your problems. Now please lay down on this couch and tell me about your mother.
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FYI, the programs that they have major interest in at the present include self-healing networks, in-the-field real-time portable translation devices, and such. One particularly freaky program they're interested in involves implanting electronic devices in flying insects to control them.
Quiz from the Article (Score:2)
 advance
yay (Score:1, Interesting)
dhs = stasi. not something i really want to support.
i am against secret courts, secret searches and secret police.
i had my chane to code for the gov back in the 90's. i said pass then, i'll pass now.
Secure? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I was thinking about this the other day. If a war similar to WW2 broke out, theres no way domestic industry, dramatically weakened by years of offshoring and a lesser emphasis on manual trades/hard sciences, could keep up. During WW2, planes, tanks, clothing, food, and assorted materials were all domestic. As long as the homefr
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We really are shooti
That's an important question (Score:3, Insightful)
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It's a flawed bueracracy. (Score:4, Interesting)
Government is more interested in your CMMI level (another flawed system but I'll leave that for another discussion) and how many PhD's your company has than the quality of your work and agility of your team.
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The culture is slow to change (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't know what to call it, so I just said 'culture.' We could call it defense, we could call it homeland security.
The culture for so long has been so immersed in expensive, bulky solutions, it will change slowly if at all. The government just doesn't feel right unless their dealing with a huge company and huge expenses. For one thing, in a way it justifies politicians existence to the voters. "Hey, look how much we're spending on security!" And truth to tell, there may be other dangers in dealing with smaller, nimbler companies.
On a lighter note, I thought this was amusing:
I know that geeks,
/.ers in particular, are lining up to work with the government on wiretapping!
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It won't change - not as long as cronyism and greed make the rules*.
*ref: Cheney, Halliburton
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Let me give you a little glimmer. Most of the contracts were of the size that only a small handful of companies in the whole world can fulfill. Halliburton can, in effect, deliver a rolling economy for a country. Being that I am pretty sure you are refering to Iraq, there economy was in shambles and not just because of the war. They needed a solution and quick so what were the options? Elicite firms from countries like France and Ge
Re:The culture is slow to change (Score:4, Interesting)
Small companies, with "lightweight" processes have traditionally been used as fronts for fraud and waste (a.k.a. "war-profiteering"). (example: ex-Senator Cunningham's dealings with "small contractor" MZM, or Shirlington Limousine, etc.)
With the implicit oversight involved with larger corporations (who tend to shun smaller contracts), this kind of fraud is less likely (though clearly not impossible - see Boeing's tanker-leasing deal). These large, established corporations tend to have established reputations they'd like to protect.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all small companies are red flags for fraud, and I'm not saying all large companies are 100% safe. I'm saying that established oversight and processes common to large companies and larger contracts tend to weed-out the most common fraudulent practices.
Senator Cunningham??? (Score:2)
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Big corporations can now achieve fraud on a scale never before realised (deregulation and privatisation have been a boon for corporate profits). The only oversight in the last twenty years, is with regard to increasing the share price and ensuring a constant increase in the pay of upper management.
Of course there s
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I have a brilliant, inexpensive, 100% reliable, portable nuclear weapon detector that I'm trying to sell to the government. Before I begin full scale production, I've been trying to get the DOD to give me a few dozen nukes so I can properly test my device. Due to the bureaucracy involved I haven't yet received the nukes that I've requested, but I have received 1200Kg of 3/4" ball bearings, an invoice for the U
Small, agile firms are essential everywhere (Score:3)
This is one of the reasons that software patents - which hit small firms disproportionately - are so bad for innovation. Anything that makes life harder for small firms - red tape, software patents, litigation, etc. - is bad for the economy because small-to-medium firms are what keep our economies healthy.
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Not the right approach (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why don't you go wave a flag or something?
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You're mostly right, except for the bit here about the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire didn't do anything to the Muslims. Islam didn't come around until 500 CE or so; Rome had already fallen by that point. I'm ju
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Here's a dodgy unsubstatiated source
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Re:Not the right approach MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:2)
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Jimmy Carter tried that '77-'80. It didn't work well at all.
Why the slam on government scientists? (Score:3, Insightful)
This quote from the article makes it sound like government scientists are incompetent boobs. The ones I know aren't. This sounds more like a political screed for the privatization of security than anything else.
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Here's a dose of reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Note: I work for a consulting firm based out of the DC area. We have a combination of commercial and Federal / Public sector clients
From the small business side:
You can't imagine the procurement requirements and overhead costs to do business in the Federal sector. Here are some examples:
1) FSO - Security officer to manage the clearances of your employees and company. Can't live with out it
2) Contract Vehicles - GSA Schedules are expensive to maintain or outsource.
3) Contracting Officers - Specialist who deal with government Contracting Officers.
4) Low Rates - Combined with the large overhead requirements above, is a problem. Trying finding competent technical help in DC.
5) Accounts Receivable that can stretch to 180 days without blinking.
6) Can't leverage commerical sales, must hire a dedicated sales force that understands the market.
Again for the big beltway bandits, these are small overhead items, but for a 150 person company, these are significant line items.
From the Government Side:
1) Risk adverse. If you screw up a small project or procurement, you could wind up on the cover of the Washington post. Not a good place to be if you're a GS12 bureaucrat waiting for your GS13.
2) Insane Budget Cycles: If you don't use it you lose it. There's a reason why so much gets done in late August / September around DC.
3) Preference for the "usual suspects" like Lockheed, Booz Allen, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Unisys, Titan etc. With items one and two, why try a new small untested company. Many companies around the beltway have gone out of business and screwed the gov. At least you know they are not going any where.
4) Compliance requirements that make SarbOX look like child's play.
That's just a small hint at the problems with doing business with the federal governement. I sure the UK or other Western Countries have the same issues.
There are not too many super enterprises that release contracts on a multi-year basis. Once you get over the moat, you are in.
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4) Low Rates - Combined with the large overhead requirements above, is a problem. Trying finding competent technical help in DC.
It is possible to find competent technical help in the National Capitol Region, but finding competent technical help with clearances who are willing to face one of the world's worst commutes and pay them enough to cover their over $650,000 mortgages is difficult.
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It's an attempt to prevent fraud and abuse.
It doesn't stop all fraud, it doesn't stop clever people from gaming the system (it's just a more complex game), and, of course, the system is only as good as the political hacks that are put into place to police it. But the absence of this overhead makes it much easier to get those contracts for the "$1000 hammer" that never get delivered.
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At the end of the day it comes down to honest people. That's a hard commodity to find these days. It makes a higher barrier to entry on the overall market for the honest people / companies, which goes back to a companies SG&A and ultimately drives prices higher.
Just my 2.
In general, I dont think we as a country hav
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It would be great if we can get away from this fundamentalist idology false dilemma of either you support 100% complete de-regulation, or your a commie.
There's plenty of room for refinement of process. Unfortunately, it's one of the most red-hot swollen festering political buttons right now.
WTF? (Score:1, Interesting)
Market forces? Terrorists haven't harnessed any market forces or entrepreneurial spirit! Our Western governments have already lost this so called "war on terror" by sailing our freedoms down the river on the basis that we are all supposed to be terribly afraid! That's the whole point of "terrorism"!! Al'qaida/Taliban/Eye-raq-ees/Space Monkeys won the mome
(Flamebait ;) (Score:5, Funny)
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You prefer the weak or nonexistent responses to
...
I would.
I prefer that over an administration that wipes it's ass with our Constitution.
#include <quotes/franklin/ben/freedomForSecurity>
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there seems to be a popular misconception on
Lets please not forget both parties suck and Democrats have the honor of having the only Elected President EVER to be impeached... go 3rd parties!
motivation, not technology (Score:2)
working in vain to outmaneuver not just the terrorists, but the surging global market for technological innovation in which those terrorists thrive.
Terrorists (or guerilla/civil war soldiers, or the new PC "no, Iraq isn't in civil war" term: "insurgents") don't thrive in a "surging global market for technological innovation"; they thrive when something polarizes/motivates people enough to dedicate their lives to killing other people or support those who will. Like a world superpower engaging in preempti
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I do remember a passage that stated basic that infadels don't counnt as people because they are all going to hell, but infadels refers to non-believers in God so the Jews and Christians aren't infadels under Islam, they believe in God, the same God as the muslim does.
That's why I find it ironic that the biggest bible-thumping president I can remember is so hated by the Muslims and our country in the midst of a religious-rev
A dinosaur? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Prevent versus Correct (Score:3, Insightful)
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Of course, to take another page from even older European history, there's another way to deal with terrorism, and that's the way the Romans dealt with their enemies. When Carthage become a real thorn in Rome's side, they attacked, killed most of the people in the city, sold the rest into slaver
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Collective punishment of a whole group of people (including innocent ones who happen to be in the same place) might get rid of your enemies. On the other hand, it might also breed even more enemies.
And Romans certainly never destroyed all their enemies.
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Perhaps, but if you wipe out so many people that there aren't many left, the only new enemies would be any survivors (which there wouldn't be many of), or people in other unrelated groups. And after seeing how brutally the first group was dealt with, the other groups of people would think twice about messing wit
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Ceterum censeo... (Score:1)
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Rome vs. Carthage != Rome vs. Huns et al. (Score:2)
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That's not true. We can't wait them out because we're completely addicted to the oil supply. Maybe if we had some decent leadership that got us off the crackpipe (oil), made some real progress in moving us to alternative energy sources that we can generate domestically, and if we had a populace that actually was interested in these things instead of voting the same losers into office time after time, then your sugges
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At the end of WWII, the french didnt want (or couldnt have) their colonies (including vietnam) back.
So, we ended up with a communist government in the north and a democratic government (heavily backed by the allied powers) in the south. Then, the north decided to annex the south and when the democratic government couldnt survive, we end up with a full scale war that no-one except the polititans really wanted and that the communists won anyway (after the los
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I think that El Al Airlines [wikipedia.org] comes pretty close if not contradicting this statement outright.
Prevention doesn't further Bush's Goals (Score:1, Flamebait)
but that's not the point (Score:5, Interesting)
So, if the purpose of "homeland security" is not actually to save lives, what is it? It's fairly simple: to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the population in order to induce them to vote for certain politicians. After all, what better way to induce FUD in people than to humiliate them when they travel anywhere in the name of security and remind them constantly that they could be blown up at any minute? 9/11 and the terrorist scare was godsent for an administration that had no direction, no plan, no leadership, and no clue. I don't want to suggest that this is a carefully planned strategy of the administration, but when 9/11 happened, Bush had found his calling--raving against the "axis of evil" and terrorists simply doesn't require much intelligence or strategy. Of course, a secondary purpose of "homeland security" is that it's a great pretext to funnel taxpayer money from the government to just those "big, ponderous" companies the article is criticizing.
So, arguing about whether homeland security is well-implemented is pointless if the purpose of homeland security is to be "big, ponderous" and wasteful in the first place.
What people should be talking about is what the point of homeland security as-we-know-it is in the first place. There were doubtlessly some straightforward and overdue changes to airline security that should have been implemented after 9/11, but two wars, hundreds of billions of dollars, and a dismantling of our constitutional rights are going to far.
Re:but that's not the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Upside down (Score:1)
Makes you wonder even more...
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Is this a joke?
Reminds me of the Zenith Angle (Score:1)
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> more off the wall brainstorming sessions with the thinkers that are far outside the
> normal trains of thought. We just might find ourselves a bit safer.
But many of those creative, out-of-the-box thinkers don't _want_ to work for an oppressive government helping them to enslave their populace. They'd be cutting their own throat. An oppressive government in the long run tends to eliminate free thinkers, so
Technology doesn't defeat terrorists (Score:2)
As Albert Einstein said... (Score:2)
and
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
Breaking news: (Score:2)
Seriously, though, how is this surprising? Small companies, by their nature, are more able to come up with good solutions to a narrowly defined problem, such as 'build a nuke detector falling within these parameters,' this should surprise no one.
However, you still need someone to oversee this host of small companies. Privatizing any large-scale project (such as 'homeland security') into a host of tiny compani
A lot to learn, maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't disagree with this. There is much that is useful in the experience, culture and skill sets of small companies.
However, I would caution about overstating what those companies bring to the table, or underestimating the degree to which government is already tapping that resource.
I've worked with government agencies and personnel. They run the gamut of professionalism, dedication and intelligence just like the private sector does. But even the best of them are hampered in doing new, creative things by this simple fact: government is huge. Not only is it huge, it is composed of constitutionally separate and independent layers (federal, state, local).
It's not that nothing new gets done. In fact, if anything, there may be too much creativity, and not enough coherence. For example, the kind of whizzy-bangy stuff TFA talks about is commonly funded by SBIRs: Small Business Innovative Research grants. The SBIR program is a great boon to small businesses, to be sure, but it is like a black box into which money is pourted and from which few useful, although many interesting results come out.
All kinds of great research gets done under these programs, but somehow it never amounts to an effective coordinated response. And since terrorism is by its nature opportunistic, it doesn't matter how exceedingly well you respond to any single technological challenge. You need big picture strategy.
This is a big difference with a tech startup, which only has to solve one technological problem better than the competitors to make its fortune.
The problem that plagues government are the things that everyone agrees need to be done, but whose organizational complexities are impossible to navigate. Do you think that FEMA bureaucrats don't want Katrina victims to get the money which has been allocated to them? The problem is the reorganization that sucked them into DHS, while billed as making response more agile, did the worst possible thing: it buried them inside a much larger agency.
Bureaucracies are, as an organizaional structure, designed to do repetitive execution of routine tasks. All the Kafkaesque aspects of them we hate result from them encountering situations that are outside their assigned tasks, not covered by policy, or all too common made worse by policies. That's what's holding up Katrina relief. Policies are in place that are conceived around a zero tolerance for waste and fraud (as if this was achievable), and values the smallest increment in that direction greater than any level of increment of humanitarian relief.
The critical missing factor is at the political level. Believe it or not there's a lot of talent, passion and dedication in government, but below the political level those people can't change policy. The political level can change policy, as well as create an environment where common sense bending of rules to meet the greater goals is tolerated. If the political level is brain dead, then each organ of government will continue to do its routine homestatic functions, but won't be part of a purposeful response to new challenges.
If government fails to respond to a big challenge, it isn't because it doesn't tap private sector expertise. Nor is it because it lacks people with talent and dedication. It's because the people we elect don't care enough about the problem to make things happen.
Should Do Vs. Can Do (Score:4, Interesting)
The borg: "You will assist us."
Hue: "I will not assist you."
well.. (Score:2)
Re:"Small, agile firms" , uh, like Lockheed-Martin (Score:2)
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What caused my eyebrows to shoot up was the claim that he could pick up gammas from uranium at one mile and also in the presence of shielding. Three problems with that assertion, one is that a mile of a
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Interesting, I would guess that's why underground nuclear detonations are so disapointing, they can't vaporize and superheat enough rock if a 1 mile air fireball is equivelent to a 3 foot rock fireball!
The other thing is these gov types are perfectly happy to let us believe things that aren't actualy true when it suits their porposes. I live in the city that has the country's fourth busiest boarder crossing and when I had my thallium stres
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The Canadians were installing radiation detectors back in the 90's to detect smuggled cigarrettes - tobacco has a high concentration of potassium.
Radscan every container. (Score:2)
How about looking at every cargo container at every port before it goes to sea and before it's brought ashore? After all, by the time the bomb gets where it's going it's too late. Brilliant [tech-associates.com]. Yes, an array of NaI detectors costs a lot more than a crummy little 1x1 crystal but the proximity gives directional information that really deals with background and false positives. Yes, competent people are working on the problem and solutions are on the way. No, the world never will be safe.
auto-dismisal of PHB in USGOV HR software (Score:1)
1) running a Windows operating system
2) recommending any MS application in a security sensitive enviroment
What we can all do for Homeland Security: (Score:1)
Dell (Score:2)
However... maybe Saddam always ordere
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The security clearance process seems to be equally weird. Some of it makes sense. They try to rule out people with a history of drug problems, gambling, and so forth that would make them vulnerable to to being bought by a foreign power. They also try to make sure you are who you say you are in order to eliminate deep-cover moles. That makes sense to an extent, though it was probably more important during the Cold War than now. But other aspects seem to be just nuts. For instance, you can't get a security
Who's.. (Score:1)
How is DHS like software vendors? (Score:3, Insightful)
HTH
Why not... (Score:1)
What YOU can do for Homeland security! (Score:1)
"Young people are joining up to fight for the future. They're doing their part - are you? Join the Mobile lnfantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship."
"Every day, Federal scientists are looking for new ways to kill bugs. - Everyone's doing their part. Are you?"
Oh yea - and this one on how to eliminate bugs:
"Hey, shoot a nuke down a bug hole, you got a lot of de
I'm inside the Fed and this is what I see (Score:1)
Doing business with Uncle Sam (Score:1)