Pentagon has the worst IT helpdesk in the US government

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 246 points – Pentagon has the worst IT helpdesk in the US government
theregister.com

Pentagon has the worst IT helpdesk in the US government::DoD is dead last for tech support, equipment, communication, and function, say staff

31

You'd think the DoD's astronomical budget would cover this.

From what I've seen, a lot of the money goes to multiple layers of mid-level managers who don't actually do anything.

They are there to document in excruciating detail how their budget is NOT being misspent, because we can't abide waste and mismanagement!

This is the one. Has anyone here seen the dod acquisitions chart?

Heres a copy: https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/09/atl_wall_chart.jpg

Holy fuck, it's like notes with strings on a cork board except even more insanely complex.

See, reading it over it seems to make sense, everything is double checked and reviewed by others to error proof, and all flows in a understandable direction.

The problem is how vague what is involved in each of these steps and how the funding is distributed. Like how many people are we paying to operate each point? How many redundancies are caught up within the burocracy of it all and siphoning off to various slush funds?

The only way to successfully operate this method they layout is if every single step performs their function, but at a 'federal' level that's like asking a cow to lay an egg.

Not even that, theres lots of DoD employees (non-managers) that get paid pretty well just to sit on their asses and do not much of anything all day. It's the biggest social welfare program in the US.

The problem is two fold, the first is that any change in process or procedure has to be approved by a committee that probably has nothing to do with IT at all; and the second is that the DoD is full of higher ranking officers that if you have a 3 day turn around for a repair -- for example, they will threaten your very existence unless they are not done immediately.

The only solution I can think off is that the IT has to be removed from the DoD, and assigned its own budget and director.

Think about how many warlords we could bribe to protect American corporate interests in countries we aren't supposed to be involved in instead of new functions IT. Those American friendly dictators aren't going to arm and install themselves.

If there's one place I'd expect to have trouble hiring, it's the Pentagon's IT team. They regularly deal with the most sensitive information about the US military, and need to have clearance to see all of it. That gives them an incredibly slim hiring pool, so it's no surprise their IT team sucks

Yeah the overlap in the Venn diagram for good engineers that don’t do any federally illegal drugs is fucking TINY

I'm guessing not too many people join the army or the air force to do IT support.

I can fix that

I did IT support for DOD as a contractor years ago. I wasn't at the Pentagon, but from where I was, It's primarily a funding problem, with a bit of corruption sitting in the purchasing side.

I can fix a lot of s*** on the cheap, but when they continually buy hardware below minimum spec for software there's only so much you can do.

Wait so its just like my job now? Buying refurbished shit that was just okay five years ago and wondering why the infrastructure has weird quirks all the time? Maybe my sanity is a little too whittled for that.

Nice to see we are spending our $766 billion on the right things. 😒

Can they not afford overhead lighting in their data center? That would be step one.

I'd like to help you, but forst tell me who played 3rd base for the losers of the 1968 world series game 4?

And who won the heosman trophy in 1974?

Can't have the enemies breeching our electronic perimeter.

Its pretty obvious for security reasons...

The next time the Chinese attack us by submitting tech support tickets we got them by the balls.

You say that, but most of the time when somebody gets hacked it's operator error and not a programming issue (i.e. the account was given to the person via social engineering not by the person defeating the authentication system).

I'm sure the people at the pentagon are aware of it as an attack vector and I am also fairly sure their mitigation plan isn't "just make it really shitty and slow lmao"

they could pay me a bunch of money I'll come and improve the situation

Edward Snowden managed to exfiltrate millions of documents because he was in help desk.

Well then Brandon vigliarolo, you should apply to help em out, or are you gonna keep making news articles?