powdermonkey

Mobilizing Industry in WW2 & Compare to Today

just finished Mobilizing Industries in WW2, big take away that is pertinent to the new POTUS is clear lines of authority.

Repeatably throughout the book FDR created Offices, Commissions, etc. to run the various aspects of a wartime economy: all clashed with each other, all wasted time (most importantly FDR's), all fought the Army and Navy (while both were trying to take over aspects of economic planning), Congress and special interests were in the mix as well and all made decisions with out working out the impact a decision may have on other aspects of the economy.

Like: defer agricultural workers or people building planes (AG workers had a deferment, so more folks became farmers - manufacturing workers had no deferment, so instead of building a tank, they could be drafted to drive the tank).

There were roughly 125 commissions, etc. created - some subsumed others or were broken off. It didn't get fixed untill May 27, 1943 (Exec Order 27) with the appointment of James F. Byrnes as director of the Office of War Mobilization. FDR called him "the assistant President" and stated that Byrnes decisions were final (freeing up Roosevelt for Grand Stategy efforts). Byrnes portfolio encomapsed everthing expect foreign policy and military grand strategy.

My one concern now with Pres. Obama is that he seems to be building an analagous situation where there are too many chef's or CxO's, TARP managers, Congressmen, Senators, Cabinet Secrataries, etc. with too many overlapping responsibilities reporting or trying to influence him one way or the other. Endless meeting could result...

Applicable lessons from WWII were:
1. Personalities matter and must have the full confidence of the President. Byrnes knew how to get things done in Washington and wasn't too fully versed in econ matters.
2. Domestic and partisan politics will intrude on everything
3. Planning is essential

Standards, Standards, Standards....

It's the new year and so lets kick it off with a same story different day: story from FAS Project on Government Secrecy about Presidential records using non-standard formats

"Volume aside, the White House electronic records were often generated in non-standard formats using proprietary software that somehow must be accommodated by NARA."

Various reports (FCW) have said the program is over budget and behind schedule and the usual suspect, LMCO (lockeheed) is the contractor.

http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/35597

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has questioned the ERA's readiness, especially since the project has endured some bumps along the way, including delays and cost overruns estimated at $16.3 million. The life-cycle cost for the complete ERA system, scheduled to be completed in 2011, has been estimated at $453 million, including development contract costs, program management, research and development, and program office support.

As recently as September, after studying the system's progress, the GAO urged NARA to create a mitigation plan in case it could not process the incoming records by Jan. 20, 2009. In a report to the congressional committees (download PDF), the GAO said, "If it cannot ingest the electronic records from the Bush administration in a way that supports the search, processing and retrieval of records immediately after the presidential transition, it will not be able to meet the requirements of the Congress, the former and incumbent presidents, and the courts for information in these records in a timely fashion."

Joint Light Tactical Vehicle award this week: it won't be open I bet

I saw this story:
BMW seeking partners for open-source car software platform and then insidedefense.com had the story: "The Defense Department this week will announce technology development contract awards in the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle [JLTV] competition, according to the Pentagon acquisition chief.

And then talking with Jim Stogdill and reading his excellent post, I was left feeling its too bad that for all the millions that will go into JLTV, its too bad DoD didn't levy some requirement for the operating system to be more open, as in made open source. (Note I am less worried about vehicles, more so about software intesive systems that go inside them)

DoD is now going pretty explicitly to a winner take all model of acquisitons (2 pilot projects and then they pick a winner that goes into full production). Now this makes sense for big iron, physical goods (need to build factories, etc.), but for software its the the wrong, very wrong model.

When DoD picks a winner for a system that is heavily software reliant the Government is placing a bet that the Contractor Team will stay at the leading edge of technology. This never happens, Contractor Teams that win slowly build a Fortress to keep ideas out, while locking the Government into their platform. Then you end where we are now, with weird data standards, legacy systems, etc. Further, 1 team will win, but the loosing Team will have some better ideas or capabilities that the warfighter would love to have on their platform, but won't get because it would mean the Winner would ultimatley get less of the pie.

So, the industrial base shrinks, a division at a company goes out business, etc. OR as an alternative the loosing team could make open source their platform: kind of a 'loose the battle, but win the war" strategy.

Practical guidence for the Gov would be: 1. open the platform up (put an RFP out to make/deliver/build an open source platform or make OSS an existing one). 2. build a community around a capability. 3. let small contracts out for incremental improvements in platforms. 4. simplify the intellectual property rights lanscape for contracting with the government so that a developer can understand them

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.

Pentagon: Open source good to go

Not good to go yet, but soon hopefully...
Pentagon: Open source good to go

Military IT folks wondering if their use of Apache, Perl, Linux and other open source software is copacetic with the brass will soon get some answers from the Defense Department's Office of the Chief Information Officer.

The office is preparing a memorandum that further clarifies how open source may be procured and used within the services.

The memo should answer many lingering questions still surrounding the open source, said Daniel Risacher, the data strategy leader for the Office of Secretary of Defense who is drafting the memo. The draft may point out some potential benefits as well.

"Those factors that are in favor of open source have not been appreciated to date," said Risacher, speaking at the Red Hat Government Users and Developers conference, being held today. The DOD CIO office is aiming to release the memo by early November.

From Risacher's description of the draft, the memo may reinforce the acceptability of using open source software within the Defense Department, as well as for other federal agencies. It may even broaden procedures for procuring commercial software.

"Those mandates [in which] we have to consider commercial off-the-shelf software, we have to apply that to open source software as well," Risacher said. "And that is not well appreciated within government."

Risacher said that he first started working on the memo last summer at the behest of the Defense Deputy CIO, David Wennergren. Although widely used in federal government, open source software, due to its unusual form of distribution, has raised questions among regulation-minded program managers.

Forward leaner of the week: NSA & Open Source Software

its interesting that the most secretive government agency is more concerned with software quality than keeping everything complete locked down. via slashdot...

NSA shows the way to develop secure systems

Posted on 06 October 2008.

The development of highly secure, low defect software will be dramatically helped by the release of the Tokeneer research project to the open source community by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The Tokeneer project was commissioned by the NSA from Praxis High Integrity Systems as a demonstrator of high-assurance software engineering. Developed using Praxis’ Correctness by Construction (CbyC) methodology it uses the SPARK Ada language and AdaCore’s GNAT Pro environment. The project has demonstrated how to meet or exceed Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 5 in the Common Criteria thus demonstrating a path towards the highest levels of security assurance.

MUST WATCH: OSS in DoD, A Culture Virus (only 5 min)

really great talk by Jim Stodgill about
Open Source in Defense: A Culture Virus

only 5 minutes long a must watch!

Can DoD use open source software?

Interesting post at ARS: How the DoD learned to stop worrying and love open source

The House draft of the annual defense budget reauthorization bill prominently lists open source software (OSS) among the objectives that should be considered in the procurement strategy for aerial vehicle technology and veteran health systems. If the bill passes in the House, it would be the first time that the National Defense Authorization Act explicitly expresses a preference for OSS. OSS has seen rapid public sector uptake over the past few years.

Governments around the world are streamlining their technological infrastructure and reducing their IT costs by using emerging open technologies. Adopters have reported a wide range of benefits, including greater interoperability, less dependence on any single vendor, more competitive pricing, and greater flexibility.

Can open source survive Congress? (or Lobbyists?)

Or can open source software survive lobbyists? from Joab @ GCN:

If the House's proposed 2009 Defense Department budget is any indication, Congress may want to see more open-source software (OSS) in defense systems. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (H.R. 5658) includes language that calls for the services to consider open source software when procuring manned or unmanned aerial vehicles. It's surprising to see a concept as technical as OSS in an actual congressional bill. But there it is. Whether it will remain in the final authorization is another question.

The House's version of the bill was passed in May; This week, the Senate is debating its own version of the bill (S. 3001). When the two halves of Congress come together, will the open source language survive in the resulting authorization?

"While you were making your slides, we would be killing you

"While you were making your slides, we would be killing you."

(Russian
officer […] in a discussion between US and Russian officers serving in
Bosnia as to who would have won if we had ever actually fought in
Western Europe.)

24 March, 1997 US News and World Reports
also look here: http://www.nbc-links.com/powerpoint.html