powdermonkey

Transparency & Failure in .Gov/.Mil IT

Recently at the Gov 2.0 summit Fed CIO Viveck Kundra talked about stopping/killing some very expensive .gov IT programs, video here:

Gov 2.0 Summit 2010: Aneesh Chopra and Vivek Kundra, "Closing the Technology Gap"

But I was left wondering what were the programs and more over why killed? Oftentimes federal (and military) IT programs will be killed or left to die, without a postmortem or documeting lessons learned. Sometimes an intrepid reporter will try to one, but that usually just scratches the surface. GAO or internal Government offices will sometimes do them if asked to by Congress, but GAO reports are usually only for the largest of the large failing programs. .Gov internal reports are usually not published or done, much less published.

Its always struck me as weird that the government doesn't push more of a lessons learned culture like the one ingrained in the military (but sadly not in the military IT field). We do this for plane crashes, but there doesn't seem to be a systematic process for documenting IT failure?

(if there is please post)

I'm hoping that Viveck and Team can come up with some sort of simplified lessons learned document, this would do a few things:

1. Put government / contractors on notice that failure will be documented, like Gunnar says "The gov doesn't look good Naked" but it might be in better shape if it was

2. Learn, Learn, Learn: doomed to repeat mistakes if we don't learn

3. Gather requirements for potential changes in process, law, promotion schedules, etc. IF need be

A lessons learned doc should include: original cost of program (estimate and contractor proposed), original period of performance, winning contractor team, dollars spent, government intellectual property developed, reasons for cancellation, etc. I'd put a floor on the study and get a small team 2-3 weeks to prepare a doc, maybe only document failure under $ xx millions?

Or maybe this would be better as a wiki somewhere?

thoughts? unworkable? makes folks too uncomfortable?

Mil-OSS working group 2 wrap-up

(first published on www.opensource.com) Mil-OSS working group 2 wrap-up

Openness in the military is coming of-age, as was evident to the attendees at the 2nd Military Open Source Software (Mil-OSS) working group held August 3-5 in Arlington, Virginia. This grassroots gathering of practitioners in the art/science of creating military capabilities was unique in its inclusive atmosphere of government civilians, military uniformed (and retired) personnel, government contractors, and university academics. All gathered with one goal: how to more rapidly create and deploy military capabilities utilizing open source software for the U.S. Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine.

What was interesting was a shift from the attitude at last years meeting of: "We can use open source software in the military?" to this years vibe of "How can we use, modify, sustain, and create more open source software around the military?" In the last year, since the update of DoD Open Source policy (see the 2009 DoD Open Source Memo), there has been an important shift in understanding that the benefits of being open vastly outweigh the hassles and foibles of closed and gated source code development--especially when the U.S. taxpayer is picking up the tab. Roadblock issues were brought up, such as:

- What are the best practices for how to run unclassified code communities for a classified client?

- How do we create, fund, and sustain development of open source?

- How do we generate more ideas on how to fix and deal with the government's acquisition system?

The military-focused OSS projects in attendance ran the gamut, from the long-established computer-aided design project BRL-CAD, to cyber (Suricata), modeling and simulation (Delta3D), geospatial (OMAR & OSSIM), and new projects such as EurekaStreams and the to-be-released Analysis of Competing Hypotheses. Presenters and the three tracks were almost too numerous; see MIL-OSS 2 Agenda for details.

The kickoff keynote was Lt. General Elder (retired), who reviewed cyber issues facing the military (video). Subsequent military keynotes discussed internal military community collaboration (Lt. Col. Allen of MilSuite), an update on the need to simplify information technologies acquisitions and deployment processes in the military (Maj. Neushul - Update on Keeping it Stupid Stupid), and a review of the current state of OSS in the DoD (Dan Risacher - DoD OSS Review).

Defensive Homeland security, OSS, and cyber issues were reviewed by Doug Maughan of DHS (Homeland Open Security Technologies) and contrasted by HD Moore of Rapid7/Metasploit who went over Open Source Cyber Weaponry.

Most presentations can be found on Slideshare at Mil-OSS WG2 Meeting. Selected presenters can be found on Vimeo.

A great addition at lunch were the many Ignite sessions, such as Gunnar Hellekson's "Fighting Forks [in DoD]" and Maj. Neushul's talk about the need for a functioning Combat Relevant Position Location Information (CRPLI) capability for the Marines.

An unexpected shout-out for WG2 came from Wired's Dangerroom (Noah Shachtman) who interviewed presenter Mathew Burton on his soon-to-be-released open source project: Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, which is "a system for organizing information that would help analysts think about complex problems more objectively, even when confronted with mountains of evidence." He called it Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, or ACH.

The ball seems to be rolling on releasing or converting military or intelligence source code as pure open source software.

By the third day, it was time for something unplanned: Barcamp, which basically split into two groups: projects and process. Project discussions included CRPLI and the Ozone Widget Framework (being used by the DoD Storefront project). The process track was mainly focused on issues around how to use, develop, and sustain OSS projects tied to the military.

A challenge was issued at the barcamp lunch in response to the need for a canonical set of briefing charts detailing the value of open source software for the military, from security to basic definitions to legal issues. All-in-all, about 100 briefing charts were created and will soon be made available to the community to use/modify/tweak as needed.

Future of Mil-OSS

The future of software in the military was a much discussed and argued topic, but one key issue agreed upon by all was the continued need for community building and collaboration. There was consensus for a Mil-OSS large annual gathering coupled with regional grassroots meetings and/or barcamps. There are rumors of proposed camps in Boston, New Orleans, Charleston, and San Diego. Join the Mil-OSS Google Group to track their progress.

A few reference links for the uninitiated:

• Website: www.mil-oss.org
• Mil-OSS WG2 presentations - http://www.slideshare.net/event/miloss-2/slideshows
• Mil-OSS WG2 videos - http://vimeo.com/channels/miloss
• Mil-OSS WG mailing list
• Mil-OSS LinkedIn group
• twitter hashtag: #miloss

Thanks to our amazing sponsors. We really couldn't have put on a great show without you!

And a big thanks to Georgia Tech Research Institute, especially  Josh Davis and Claire Gould, for doing the truly thankless back (breaking) office work of coordinating everything!

@ Politics of Open Source Conference

Politics of Open Source Conference

http://politicsofopensource.jitp.net/program

"Women in Free/Open Source Software Development" - Hanna Wallach

Women in software: 28% in closed source vs. 2% in open source

number came out of FLOSSPOLS, EU Study,

Qual/Quan study (online survey 1,541 participants) 

Results: active (but unconscious) exclusion: "jokes" about women, women used as nontechnical 'typical' user - i.e. Aunt Tilly used as strawman 

Beard distinguishes you as a 'hacker' 

Typical tasks:

Men: Technical tasks (code writing, testing, bug reports, etc.)

Women: Social tasks (documentation, org events, translation, etc.)

Grassroots projects:

Debian GNU/Linux, 4 out of 900 Debian developers are women, 8 in the entire history of Debian.

OSS COnf: 4th DoD Open Technology Conference in DC, Oct. 29

conference to attend:

OPEN ARCHITECTURE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE OPEN STANDARDS

The 4th DoD Open Technology Conference expands the dialogue between government and industry on the business case, security and real-world military applications for open technology methods and paradigms.  This conference will address many of these critical issues from the perspective of both warfighter benefits and challenges for DoD implementation.  Topics include: Emerging open source software policy in DoD How open technologies will support DoD 2.0 Impacts to business models as primes and agencies move to open technologies Improving DoD access to innovation Federated - collaborative development environments and their impact of DoD software development processes Impacts on acquisition processes Intellectual property issues in open environments Attendees will hear from government leaders and industry experts on the use of open source software, open standards and open architectures across the military services, and potential for impact on defense industry business models.

GOSCON08: NASA-Cracking the Code on Government Procurement Requirements; Open Source BI Fuels Jet Propulsion

notes from GOSCON 2008 session:
Cracking the Code on Government Procurement Requirements; Open Source BI Fuels Jet Propulsion

using JasperSoft for business intelligence on the ground stations, as well as an enourmous amount of open source throughout the enterprise. OSS is on the mars landers as well

Defense BarCamp, Aug 8-9

we're putting on a defense barcamp if you're interested Aug 8,9 in Crystal City, VA

wiki:
http://barcamp.org/BarCampMil (Please RSVP)
Google group:
http://groups/google.com/group/barcampmil

Ground rules:
- Demo tech that is focused around the Defense, IC, Gov and humanitarian domains, just needs to have a gov tie-in
- only show stuff you are happy with 'getting out' there
- in general the proclivity is toward open source software, but not a requirement

OSS: NetEpi

very cool: NetEpt

Free, open source, network-enabled tools for epidemiology and public health practice

Public health is an area of endeavour concerned with protecting and improving the health of sub-groups of the population (or the entire population), rather than with the care of individual patients.

Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of populations, and serves as the foundation of almost all public health health practice.

NetEpi, which is short for "InterNet-enabled Epidemiology", is a collaborative project to create a suite of free, open source software tools for epidemiology and public health practice which make full use of the Internet. Anyone with an interest in population health epidemiology or public health informatics is encouraged to examine the current suite of tools and to contribute to their further development. Contributions which involve formal and/or informal testing of the tools in a wide range of circumstances and environments are particularly welcome, as are offers of assistance with design, programming and documentation tasks. We are also happy to talk to potential sponsors of the NetEpi projects.

GSA: agency was able to drop the $20,000 per processor support fees

GSA makes the case for open source

Coleman said that while GSA has hired a company to support the instances of Linux in its data center, the agency saved money by discontinuing support of its knowledge management software, KnowledgeTree, because the software was stable and the agency no longer required a lot of changes. By doing so, the agency was able to drop the $20,000 per processor support fees.

WOW! Navy to focus only on open systems

Navy to focus only on open systems

By Peter Buxbaum, Published on March 6, 2008

The Navy will acquire only systems based on open technologies and standards.

Vice Adm. Mark Edwards, deputy chief of naval operations for communications, broke the news March 5 to a Navy IT Day audience in Vienna, Va., sponsored by AFCEA International.

“The days of proprietary technology must come to an end,” he said. “We will no longer accept systems that couple hardware, software and data.”

The Navy’s decision was informed by a combination of motivations, including the desire to provide the latest capabilities to warfighters and control the costs of its information technology operations, he added.

“We can’t accept the increasing costs of maintaining our present-day capabilities,” Edwards said. “In the civilian marketplace, it’s just the opposite. Some private-sector concerns are cutting their costs by 90 percent while expanding their performance.”

Edwards noted that the Navy has cut the number of databases and applications it maintains and has reduced its networks by 40 percent. “But it is not enough,” he added. “We would have to double our IT budget over the next several years just to run in place.”

By using an open network architecture, the Navy could rapidly upgrade its capabilities and handle increases for demand, Edwards said.

“Above all, we must break the stovepipes of data so that we can share information across domains,” he said.

The failure to lead in technology could have dire consequences, Edwards said.

“The situation is very similar to that of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War,” he said. “Because we put them in a position of always having to catch up, the mere threat of the Strategic Defense Initiative crippled the Soviet ability to continue the arms race and enabled our side to dictate terms. If we remain behind in technology, a future adversary will eventually bring terms to us.”

An Open Source Platform for Personal Robots

Steve Cousins

- Willow Garage out of Stanford
- Private Robot Ver 1 (PR-1), can go around any ADA compliant bldg. so far only tele-operated
- all open source software
- have produced 10 PR2 robots as a platform for researchers
- people need the ability to tinker

this continues to prove that (eventually) good (and useful) technology eventually becomes open source