DoDIIS Worldwide Conference 17-21 May 2009

Does anyone really get anything out of DODIIS other than the social events and networking opportunities? Every year DODIIS makes promises to address the same on-going problems, but no real progress is ever made between conferences. Has DODIIS ever really followed through on any of those promises to deliver new enterprise tools and capabilities? What enterprise tools or capabilities has DODIIS recently provided that actually worked in an operational environment outside the DIAC? How many years have topics such as DTW and ALIEN been discussed at DODIIS? How many new thin-client DTWs were replaced with old thick-client computers last year because the DTW could not deliver what it promised to do? How many times has ALIEN been re-branded to try to hide the fact that it has not delivered any operational capability yet? If DODIIS actually delivered on half of the promises made at these conferences, we would actually have a world-class IT enterprise. Instead we have more IT capability with our personal computers at home.

Heather, you raise some important points. One is the mention of the social events and networking opportunities. Engineers and technologists from across the enterprise will have opportunities to connect with others face to face and get caught up, and events like this can provide an important way of strengthening bonds between techies. Folks get to know each other via many other enterprise activities/events/work, but this is proven to be a very helpful way to keep building a strong team.

You also mention things that many of us find frustrating. Continual progress is critically important. And enterprises everywhere are discovering that their workforce is complaining about the observation you make of IT capabilities at home outpacing IT capabilities in the workplace. This is a huge mega trend.

Sorry I don't have good answers for you, other than to say that we all need to keep moving forward. My sense is that many of the IT vendors who will be at DoDIIS will have technologies that can help the enterprise move forward in dramatic ways (many others will not, of course, but how do you know till you check them out?).

So, for me, I say all who can should come to DoDIIS. And you should check out every vendor on the expo floor, and participate in as many breakout sessions as possible, and attend every plenary session. It will help, I think.

Cheers,
Bob

I'm with Heather on this. Unfortunately, you rarely see the "users" at DoDIIS conferences - they are certainly not give a place of honor when they do show up. Shouldn't a technology conference focus on user needs and not on technologists feeling good? How many technologies keep getting thrown over the transcom at users when what they often want most is a working network and simple solutions to the problems that have been around for years. Even the process of getting technologies into DoDIIS is so flawed that users walk away after years of trying with nothing to show for it. In these days of increasingly tight budgets surely the money spent on DoDIIS Worldwide conference could be used more effectively in getting the system to work. Or perhaps DoDIIS Worldwide could be held in DC where the bulk of the users are located so that they could attend and talk about their problems.

Kelcy,

I think Heather raises important perspectives too, and you underscore many of those. But in fairness to the IT guys, they are handed impossible tasks and given a budget that cannot even begin to address the many requirements levied on them, so one way to optimize what they do is to bring all the techies together for a conference like this. Senior representatives from the user community are always there as senior speakers and I know more would be welcome as attendees, but I think what is really needed is a way for users to band together to strengthen their own community. For example, a constant challenge in this particular community (users of intel in DoD) is that they all stay so busy they never focus on good means to articulate requirements in any usable fashion. Maybe if the users had a yearly conference with a mechanism for IT priorities to be levied and resourced then it would help address some of the problems you and Heather mention above. I know this would not solve every problem and I know DoDIIS is no where near as agile as it should be, but if users could organize the way the IT folks organized it would be a good thing, I think.

And I also detected another key challenge in your note. Many believe the most critically important users are located in the DC area. You mention "the bulk" of users are in DC. I'm not sure about total numbers, maybe you are right there, but I don't think so. DoDIIS users are around the globe and I think it serves a great purpose to try to get the DoDIIS conference closer to Tampa where two COCOMs are. I would almost vote to have it in Tampa every year for that reason alone (but hey I don't get a vote on that!).

Anyway, I totally have to admit that I think every IT professional should read what you and Heather have to say, you are both very right and probably reflect the perspectives of the majority of the workforce. But I also think the majority of the workforce could be better served if their leadership pulled groupings of the workforce together in events similar to the DoDIIS conference.

Cheers,
Bob

I think the few comments here raise the point that users and others are very frustrated with lack of acceptable progress over the "years". What may be productive is to find/develop a forum where users can vent their frustrations and get meaningful feedback - non-attribution style. Not sure that can be done since people get offended when others start tracking with some of their perceptions of reigning stupidity in huge endeavors. Has to be a forum where senior leaders put themselves on the hook with their answers. I find that many of our woes lie within the realm of risk avoidance mentalities within the intel community instead of risk acceptance mentalities. So legislation and directives that hinder good progress can be very disconcerting. An actual answer to address just these few concerns on this page would be a change to IT perimeter security in the IA realm while leaving more default options open inside the perimeter to make it easier to troubleshoot and maintain systems. Too often, we kill ourselves dorking up systems in the name of security and causing all manner of extreme troubleshooting to get things to work due to port closures or what not. A comprehensive and wholesome approach to IT is more compelling. For example, if we as a nation actually controlled our borders we wouldn't have to worry so much about inside-the-country. Buttt, since our current and past President are more worried about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, our borders remain relatively open/porous and so we need more interaction within our country as a result. Should we decide to properly control our borders then we can live more freely within the country. Same with IT and security in the DoDIIS realm. We need to focus more on perimeter controls and checks and be more free within our enclaves/enterprises so we're not spending so much time on getting great technology to work right or tons of time troubleshooting such deployed technology because we dorked up the works applying security constraints without truly understanding the impact of that freakin gold disk on various applications. It's a tough situation to be sure that causes such frustrations as Heather mentioning DTW not working right. DTW can work right and from a Sun corporate perspective the technology is sound. It's just when you put that security flavor all over it that it begins puking. Additionally, it's not just security/IA that can dork up good IT technology, the procurement and budgets have a way of engaging extreme stupidity at a throughly deep level and I think that some of the frustration on this page is due in part to procurement and budget shenanigans. Nothing like the non-Federal non-Reserve not being accountable to taxpayers for trillions while Wall St get's bailed out including bonuses, perks, and outrageous salaries for not doing an acceptable job, while DoD is told to tighten it's belt, do more with less, and suck it up! But, I digressed...

Robert you raise many good issues here. Thanks.
Bob