Workplace Archives

The leaders at the Defense Logistic Agency's Disposition Services outfit, which sells or finds a way to reuse surplus or outmoded military property, has such poor employee communications that it decided it needed some outside help to develop a management transformation thingy.

Employee surveys have shown poor and/or misleading communication is the root cause in the failure of the organization to improve rapidly, Disposition Services said, even though its management has tried mightily to improve.

Past efforts have included directing supervisors to speak with their employees more openly and effectively, and use contractors to provide short one-time inspirational speeches on the importance of communication. (If DLA wants an inspirational speech, I'd be happy to do it gratis - and throw in some humor too.)

Now Disposition Services has decided it "needs to holistically address the communications shortcomings of the organization" and wants an outfit to help it with communications seminar training, group facilitation, coaching, teaching, mentoring and printed material.

Disposition Services hopes this will help "foster honest, open effective communications processes coupled with leadership and management strategies focused on developing a consistent enterprisewide leadership environment that embodies the principles and core values of the organization, reflective of the performance-based leadership system."

If nothing else, the above sentence should win a Buzzword Bingo prize.

I think the whole Disposition Services gang should go bowling together one night a week.

I think tracking lost Veterans Affairs Department BlackBerry gadgets may become a regular feature here, with reports on Wednesday and in June -- and, here now, Thursday's roundup of the number of the gizmos lost so far this year by VA employees.

Veterans Chief Information Officer Roger Baker told me on Thursday that as of June 30, 129 VA BlackBerrys have gone astray compared with 189 in all of 2009. Since that works out to a monthly Berry loss rate of 21.5 in 2010 versus a monthly loss rate of 15.75 in 2009, VA is well on its way to losing more of the gadgets this year than last.

But Baker said I need to apply another statistic: VA has about 35,000 BlackBerrys in use, increasing at a rate of more than 20 percent a year. Simply put: More BlackBerrys mean more are lost. "My calculation [using the 2009 number] says that's about half a percent lost annually," Baker said.

Oh well, I guess it's better (and cheaper) than losing MRI scanners at that rate.

A variety of speech transcripts and slides released by the Pentagon on Monday called for combining the Defense Department chief information officer ship with the Defense Information Systems Agency, but various crystal ball folks I've talked to are still trying to figure out the end game.

Does this mean that Army Lt. Gen. Carroll Pollett, the director at DISA, will end up dual-hatted as the Defense CIO? (And for those who argue this is a job for a civilian, others counter that Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson serves as the Army CIO.)

Or does it mean that Pentagon management will select a civilian CIO and install him or her in DISA, with Pollett serving as the deputy CIO, but still retaining his director title?

Finally, will Teresa "Teri" Takai, the CIO of California whom President Obama nominated for the Defense CIO job will wait until the Pentagon finishes re-arranging its deck chairs -- or will she jump ship?

More needs to be revealed.

It's a rule of thumb that insiders pose the greatest threat to classified information systems -- a rule sadly reinforced by the public release of 91,000 classified, purloined Defense Department documents by Wikileaks.

Defense has zeroed in on Army Pfc. Bradley Manning as the source of the documents Wikileaks released, because it already has him in custody for allegedly leaking other documents to Wikileaks this year.

While the Pentagon has been all over the news in its reaction to potential damage caused by this massive leak, it has been strangely silent on any new plans to counter insider threats -- or how, as the New York Times put it, a private was able to "exploit a loophole in Defense Department security to copy thousands of files onto compact discs over a six-month period. In at least one instance, according to people familiar with the inquiry, Private Manning smuggled highly classified data out of his intelligence unit on a disc made to look like a music CD by Lady Gaga."

This may have something to do with the fact that in fiscal 2010, the Defense Information Systems Agency budgeted a mere $814,000 for insider threat detection systems and asked for a $2.2 million budget for insider detection tools in fiscal 2011. That's out of an overall information systems security operations and maintenance budget request of $288.6 million.

Since insiders account for 75 percent of leaks, why does DISA allocate such a small amount of its budget to countering the biggest part of the information security problem?

Those smart techie folks at Carnegie Mellon University have put together a program aimed at boosting young students' interest in computer science with the hopes that they can convince more teenagers to enter scientific and technological careers.

The school launched on Tuesday an educational initiative, with $7 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to develop tools that allow middle and high school students to interact with robots to learn about computer science, science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- you know, CS-STEM. Carnegie Mellon officials hope the initiative can reverse what it calls "a significant national decline in the number of college students majoring in" the sciences.

The program is called Fostering Innovation through Robotics Exploration, or FIRE, as in fire up your interest in computer science. It will support the creation of programs such as "game-like virtual worlds where robot programs can be tested, as well as computerized tutors that teach mathematics and computer science in the context of robotics," according to a press release.

"The idea is that these programs must be rigorous, but fun -- what we call 'hard fun,'" said Robin Shoop, director of FIRE and of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Academy, an international leader in the development of K-12 robotic education curriculum. "Robots provide a great teaching tool. Kids like robots and are innately curious about how they work and how they make decisions. Finding answers to their questions is fun, but technically challenging, and that makes robotics uniquely suited to teaching students computer science, engineering and mathematics."

Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, left, and Don Faul, director of online operations for Facebook, talk to employees in Silicon Valley, Calif., on April 28.
Photo by Air Force Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison

While the average Facebook employee probably does not meet Defense Department attire or haircut standards, Defense Deputy Secretary William J. Lynn III told a group of Facebookers at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., on Wednesday that he viewed the two cultures as congruent.

In a sign that social media has been embraced by an at-first-reluctant Defense Department, Lynn told the employees, "You're very much a part of our world." He then added, "We're also very much a part of your world. We use social media just as other organizations do. It's a critical element for us."

Lynn is visiting Silicon Valley companies on his road trip, and he told Facebook workers that Defense needs a few good force-multiplier ideas from commercial pioneers.

Who would have thunk that a top Defense official would view Facebook and its technology as a force multiplier?

Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington will close in September 2011, with its personnel, patients and operations moving to an expanded, joint medical facility at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

This move, along with development of a new facility at the Dewitt Army Community Hospital in Fort Belvoir, Va., will require a lot of juggling of civilian personnel at all three facilities managed by a workforce mapping process, according to the folks at the task force managing the realignment.

All civilian employees at the three hospitals will receive notification of their future job assignments in writing no later than the middle of June, the task force said.

Employees then will have an opportunity to accept their assignment, request a change in location or indicate they do not intend to continue working when the transition occurs.

These preferences will be tracked by the Civilian Human Resources Council. If employees request a change from their original assignment, they will be considered as vacancies.

Personally I'd opt for metro-friendly Bethesda, rather than Fort Belvoir, which stands a good chance of becoming the Commute From Hell. Once the work force there more than doubles to 41,700 people in 2011 as the result of the move of multiple Army and intelligence agencies, traffic will be a bit thick.

Shh, the National Security Agency has developed a software tool that detects thumb drives or other flash media connected to a network, and any federal agency can get a copy free -- no box tops or coupons required.

The NSA provided a brief tantalizing description of its USBDetect 3.0 Computer Network Defense Tool in the unclassified part of its fiscal 2011 budget request.

The software, the NSA said, provides "network administrators and system security officials with an automated capability to detect the introduction of USB storage devices into their networks. This tool closes potential security vulnerabilities; a definite success story in the pursuit of the [Defense Department] and NSA protect information technology system strategic goals."

I figured the NSA might like to tell a digit-stained wretch more about this success story, but alas, the agency declined to unburden itself. An image therapist up at Fort Meade, Md., told me what I found in the budget documents about the detection tool is all the info NSA cares to share with me -- or the rest of the world.

USBDetect evidently has been around for almost two years and has been successfully used by the Homeland Security Department to sniff out flash media gizmos, according to a report on the use of thumb drives and similar gadgets on DHS networks.

The Defense Information Systems Agency makes a brief mention of the USB detection software on its information assurance Web page but buries the details behind a firewall.

I have a hunch that a bunch of other agencies use the detection software, and so before you stick a thumb drive into your government computer to copy a 100 slide PowerPoint brief, beware that Software Big Brother may be watching.

The Navy is looking for a few good veterans to staff its cyber force, offering openings at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Norfolk, Va.

The folks over at the Navy chief information officer shop said they want to hire up to 300 veterans with IT experience to work on the cyber front lines. If you are qualified and interested, you can find more info here: http://www.doncio.navy.mil/ContentView.aspx?ID=1682

If I was not already over-employed, I'd opt for a Pearl Harbor job.

Oh my, when will they ever learn at the Veterans Affairs Department?

I have heard from well placed sources that an employee at the VA medical center in Atlanta downloaded patient clinical data to a personal laptop, and an investigation may be pending.

Details are sparse on this breaking story, but I was told the employee -- a physician assistant nurse practitioner -- downloaded 18 years worth of clinical data on an unknown number of patients to conduct research.

If this all sounds eerily familiar, it is. In 2006 a VA data analyst downloaded information on 26.5 million records -- or practically every living veteran -- onto the hard drive on his personal laptop, which was later stolen.

The good news in the current situation is that the laptop was not stolen. The bad news is that none of the downloaded data in 2006 included clinical information, while all the current case involved a whole mess of medical data.

The timing on this could not be worse. The Obama administration is trying to sell the American public on the need for a national electronic health record system. That's a tough sell if folks find out that their supposedly private electronic records are subject to downloads for research.

Does VA have policies and procedures that bar the download of veteran data to personal laptops? You bet. But the best policies and procedures don't do much in the face of human ignorance.