Hacking incidents are so common, anymore. One wonders why the government doesn’t do more about it–but I suppose that would require updating ancient software.
Thanks, Obama!
What did he do? Give away the passwords?
I was being sarcastic. The dull thud of my joke would resonate, if it could.
I’m not going to say this is Obama’s fault, per se, as he didn’t break anything that wasn’t already broken. But this does show why we need a President who cares about the nuts and bolts of governing and not just giving inspiring speeches and promoting his ideology. A President that cares about this stuff and has even an ounce of tech savvy will make this an important thing to fix.
It’s especially important to fix it if you want to assure voters that government can be competent. Governing in the 21st century is going to be awfully tough if citizens can’t trust the government to keep their private information safe. Either this will be fixed, or a Rand Paul type is going to get citizens behind forcing the government to divest itself of this data completely. Big government dies forever when that happens.
So, who of the current candidates for President in 2016 would you suggest would fill the bill you have just posted?
Martin O’Malley. O’Malley is a pioneer in the area of data driven governance. That shows that he a) cares about modern IT issues, and b) cares about the performance of government.
I’m not a fan of his ideology, but if you care about these types of issues, if you want government to work and that’s your top priority, he’s far and away the best candidate.
Al Gore also made these types of issues a major part of the Reinventing Government initiative. But now we’re going on two straight administrations that don’t care about whether the government actually does its job well, so problems are starting to add up. And government has serious performance problems even under the best of circumstances. What we have going on now is just ridiculous. And fixing it shouldn’t even be an ideological issue. I’ll support any candidate that makes this a priority, ideology be damned. Because as much as I’d like to see smaller government, what affects my day to day life more profoundly is having my life screwed up because the government couldn’t be bothered to even keep my data safe.
Government IT systems are subject to hundreds of thousands of hacking attacks a day, often from well-funded and powerful organizations. It is literally a non-stop assault by well-paid professionals.
There are a few tricky trade-offs. One is security vs, innovation. Innovation means that people have quick access to the latest in technology, Security means that only software meeting certain standards can be used-- and that there is some kind of approval and monitoring process. So every time you require more security, you are looking at making it slower and costlier to innovate. It’s always about finding the sweet spot in these trade-offs.
The other issue is that if you make your system so secure that it becomes slow and cumbersome, people will find workarounds. If you require a 25 character password that changes weekly, people will write their password on a post-it note next to their desk. If it takes people 15 minutes to log on to their email, people are going to send documents to their personal emails. If you can’t provide people with modern software, people are going to find some fly-by-night cloud-based provider and use it without approval. So again, you have to figure out how to provide security while not making things so restrictive that people avoid working within the rules.
It’s not that people don’t care. Security is definitely an easier sell than innovation, and security is a major fixation of any federal IT organization. Ending up in a major data breech is basically the worst thing that can happen. It’s what keeps them up at night. But at the same time, they don’t have the option to make everyone work on unnetworked computers in windowless rooms.
If anyone has an easy answer, I’m all ears.
Its interesting you leap to the conclusion that “the President doesn’t care about tech and can’t lead” while my first question is, did Republican budget cuts hurt OPM’s cyber security efforts?
A better question to ask is why keeping IT systems updated and secure is less important than having expensive meetings with high priced entertainment? A lot of the money budgeted to agencies is fungible. Congress doesn’t tell the IRS, “Hey, here’s $50 million for shit you don’t need.”
It is up to a President to demand that taxpayer money be spent wisely. Like I said, I’m not singling anyone out here, just pointing out that going forward we need to care more about this stuff, especially given the government’s increased ability to store data and keep track of us in general. I realize the “It’s Obama’s fault” post was meant as snark, but Presidents are in fact 100% accountable for how government agencies perform. They have the money and the power to direct that changes be made, and if agencies are instead wasting money on BS like $1500 presidential suites in the finest hotels, then that practice needs to be curtailed. And it can be curtailed through a simple executive order.
Nonetheless, we can totally trust the government.
How credible are government assurances that signing up for ACA is safe?
They’re not. China will be along to repo your kidney any time now.
Im sure you are aware of the massive restrictions since the GSA scandal in 2010? Right now, conference attendance is so restricted that it’s hard for a scientist, for example, to present their research at conferences. Federal employee attendance at professional events is very limited.
Right now, with few exceptions, no food is served anywhere. No office coffee pot. No lunch when hosting a special meeting. If your office wants a holiday gathering, you are free to have one on your own dime outside of work hours.
They even recently ruled that federal offices can’t stock plastic silverware in the lunch room.
Which should even further demonstrate the limits of government’s ability to accomplish things. But yes, I was aware that in response to press reports the administration acted in clumsy fashion.
That’s a creative interpretation.
Or, the government cracked down as needed and taxpayer money is being better spent.
Those Feds, sucking off the government that with their fancy plastic silverware.
Restrictions are inevitable, but if your office becomes an actively unpleasant place to work and if people feel like they are falling behind in their field because they can’t attend professional events, eventually you will be unable to attract talented people- which makes everything more expensive and less effective.
I think your ideal world here is to make it so that federal workers are unable to work effectively, so that you can then rail about how ineffective they are.
It’s a good thing that only the government is being targeted by hackers, it’d be a hell of a thing if hackers ever went after credit cards and banking data. Funny how the knives come out for Obama after we discover this sophisticated attack by a superpower but Bush got a pass after failing to act on intelligence that a ragtag group of terrorists was about to strike in late summer 2001.
The truth is, a determined superpower with a ton of money and skilled computer experts are going to be able to break into a lot of systems and wreak havoc. We may decry what the Chinese are doing but you can bet the US is doing or attempting to do the same to them. It’s just the latest variant in the ancient game of espionage. If you want to stop it, perhaps you should pressure your Congress to give the administration the funding to do something about it. Sitting back and saying “Haw, haw! Government can’t do shit! Seeeeeeeee! I tolllllllllllld you!” may be cathartic for some but a pretty childish response in reality.
You think that money is better spent because Congress enacted laws that often prevent a government scientist from going to a conference to talk with other government scientists?