Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Yes, the technology is here to watch everyone all the time, but do those who have it also have the ability to use it? Each day I see yet another example of the reach of technology. Facial recognition seems to be the most recent target of the they-are-watching-us crowd. Little cameras are […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Our central government continues to call for technical talent while not changing the culture of the workplace. Some still believe in fairy tales. The past President spent two terms asking for tech talent from places and industries that had tech talent to come to Washington D.C. and the Federal workplace. The current […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Simple desires for the workplace. Years ago, a wise old man once told me, “The workplace should be pleasant and profitable.” He worked in a commercial business. No profits, no business, no jobs. Profits were necessary. Also necessary, in his experience, was that the workplace be pleasant. If it wasn’t pleasant, people […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Election day is upon us. Let us pause a moment as adults and state the obvious. Let’s state the obvious: of course “foreign actors” are hacking political campaigns. In the old days you would throw toilet paper all over their front yard trees or hit their house with rotten eggs. That took […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If elected leaders want it, of course someone will build the fill-in-the-blank registry (if it doesn’t already exist). Big news lately about how large numbers of programmers have pledged not to build a fill-in-the-blank registry. (It is pretty easy to make such a pledge when you are employed and have enough work […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Government contractors use a new form of the Agile methods. I have met an ever increasing government contractors who claim to use a method they call Agile Lite. This is quite simple. The government official who directs the contractor tells them: (1) Tell everyone that you are doing Agile. (2) Every day, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There is the great idea, then there is the great execution that brings the idea to fruition. In my experience, the idea is greatly over valued. I worked 28 years inside government. I was bombarded with examples of, “Oh, so-and-so is a great idea person. We need you to work all the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If a system designed to last a few months last 12 years, is that a success or a failure? A recent story hailed the success of the NASA Mars rover. The rover was “designed” to last a few months, but is still going after 12 years. Wow! What a great design and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Governments worldwide are grappling with how to make their infrastructure safe from hacking. The solution is trivial. Everyone is afraid that their SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems are being hacked (here is one story of many). Bad people will cause dams to overflow and sewage to be poured into drinking […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If someone could overcome the scientific and logical barriers to backdoors to encryption systems, they would still face one of trusting liars. Many of our elected representatives want our technology companies to build encryption systems with “backdoors.” (Here is a link to one story of such.) These magical backdoors would permit the […]

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