Monday, July 28, 2008
A long summer away..
I seem to be drawn away from blogging in the summer as there is always something outside that calls me away. Well to be a seasonal blogger or just blog I think the important thing is just to keep posting. Maybe someone out there finds what I have to say insightful and useful. But then again I've said that I'm doing this for me. If other folks enjoy my blog all the better!
A Time for hericy...
Ah but with out heretics we'd still think that the sun revolved around the earth! We must challenge the status quos in order to provide a space where true freedom can prosper. Some wise person (wink wink) once told me there are three kinds of GS employee; 1) The kind that cares and works hard to get the job done, 2) The Power Mongers, and 3) the burn outs.
I'd have to say that 70% of the GS'rs fall into the burn out category, with 20% falling into the getting the job done (not necessarily correctly mind you), and the last 10% being the power hungry premedanas.
I’d like to see those percentages shift to 10% burn outs and 70% getting the job done and the remaining 20% focused on service improvement. In other words the 20% would be the management who care about getting better service to American tax payer. But there in lies the core of the problem, that another very wise man (wink wink) shared with me, the Federal Government is the largest non-profit business on the face of the planet. It is only answerable to Congress (another branch of itself) and as we have seen from the esteemed Senator from Alaska the internet is a series of tubes!
With the watchers being blinded by ignorance to the power at there finger tips I think it becomes easier to understand and accept that the culture of security goes beyond those who work, those who are burned out, and those who just want power. The culture of security is paradigm to the culture of seat belts.
Once upon a time the presence of seat belts in the car was optional. It wasn’t until a guy named Nader (another heretic) spoke out for automotive safety standards that things started to change. I think the most important word of that statement is “started” as it took 30 plus years of education and enforcement to see the survival rates that we see on the highways today. People I know put seat belts on and don’t even think twice about it.
We’ve just begun this effort to change the culture of information security in the federal government. It’s going to take a long time, a lot of effort, money, and enforcement (giving people tickets for not clicking the seatbelt as it were) and maybe even fighting the good fight for a generation. The X Gen folks (me), and those that came after me, have a different perception of the meaning of data and what is possible with the data processing systems we have today.
I have only seen one X Gen’r in senior position within the federal IT space and the rest are baby boomers who, I believe, have it burned into there punch card heads that, and they will deny this, we live in a world were data is like concrete. You pick it up, move it, store it and build things with it. I look at data like water. It can harden to blocks of ice data. Melt to flow in any direction or evaporate into a gas state (it’s there but you can’t see it). I don’t even think the baby boomer managers out there are even aware of this at a conscious level. Remember it’s burned into there punch card brains.
Regardless if they are aware of it or not they are not looking at data systems like vessels for water management. They look at blocks of concrete which ultimately impacts the entire conversation about data security and how we interact within our digital lives. After all why should we care about rouge access onto a network if data is a concrete block that I can tie down (password protect) in a NTFS file share? But if you look at it from a fluid dynamics perspective everything changes and the insanity of classified or privacy information on a public network share becomes clearer. Fluids are constantly in motion or in a process of transition from one state to another due to the influence of the environment around them. The same holds true for data if your mind it open to the concept.
I'd have to say that 70% of the GS'rs fall into the burn out category, with 20% falling into the getting the job done (not necessarily correctly mind you), and the last 10% being the power hungry premedanas.
I’d like to see those percentages shift to 10% burn outs and 70% getting the job done and the remaining 20% focused on service improvement. In other words the 20% would be the management who care about getting better service to American tax payer. But there in lies the core of the problem, that another very wise man (wink wink) shared with me, the Federal Government is the largest non-profit business on the face of the planet. It is only answerable to Congress (another branch of itself) and as we have seen from the esteemed Senator from Alaska the internet is a series of tubes!
With the watchers being blinded by ignorance to the power at there finger tips I think it becomes easier to understand and accept that the culture of security goes beyond those who work, those who are burned out, and those who just want power. The culture of security is paradigm to the culture of seat belts.
Once upon a time the presence of seat belts in the car was optional. It wasn’t until a guy named Nader (another heretic) spoke out for automotive safety standards that things started to change. I think the most important word of that statement is “started” as it took 30 plus years of education and enforcement to see the survival rates that we see on the highways today. People I know put seat belts on and don’t even think twice about it.
We’ve just begun this effort to change the culture of information security in the federal government. It’s going to take a long time, a lot of effort, money, and enforcement (giving people tickets for not clicking the seatbelt as it were) and maybe even fighting the good fight for a generation. The X Gen folks (me), and those that came after me, have a different perception of the meaning of data and what is possible with the data processing systems we have today.
I have only seen one X Gen’r in senior position within the federal IT space and the rest are baby boomers who, I believe, have it burned into there punch card heads that, and they will deny this, we live in a world were data is like concrete. You pick it up, move it, store it and build things with it. I look at data like water. It can harden to blocks of ice data. Melt to flow in any direction or evaporate into a gas state (it’s there but you can’t see it). I don’t even think the baby boomer managers out there are even aware of this at a conscious level. Remember it’s burned into there punch card brains.
Regardless if they are aware of it or not they are not looking at data systems like vessels for water management. They look at blocks of concrete which ultimately impacts the entire conversation about data security and how we interact within our digital lives. After all why should we care about rouge access onto a network if data is a concrete block that I can tie down (password protect) in a NTFS file share? But if you look at it from a fluid dynamics perspective everything changes and the insanity of classified or privacy information on a public network share becomes clearer. Fluids are constantly in motion or in a process of transition from one state to another due to the influence of the environment around them. The same holds true for data if your mind it open to the concept.
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