Waaaaaay back in April, some of my family came out for Corinne’s blessing. My parents came for a week, and my brother Christopher and his son Miles were here for that weekend. I came across some nice pictures, so here they are!
We had a picnic dinner at a local park one evening. As I recall, it was windy and chilly, but the kids had a blast on the playground.
After Christopher and Miles left, but while my parents were still in town, we went to Muir Woods. It was pretty fantastic. Unfortunately, none of the pictures with my parents came out very well, but they were there!
And to round out our coverage of April, Kyle and Heather made this:(I think Kyle did most of the work, but it’s pretty clear who his muse was.)
The article “Inside Obama’s Stealth Startup” was published yesterday over at fastcompany.com. It discusses the U.S. Digital Service as well as 18F and the effort to bring government tech into the 21st century. When these stories post I oftentimes take a look at the comment threads on common tech watering holes like Slashdot and HackerNews. Generally speaking, Slashdot comment threads are rather cynical while HackerNews tends to be more optimistic, but overall it provides some kind of view into how the greater tech world is responding. So I was surprised at the amount of cynicism expressed in the comments on HackerNews on this article.
Now, I tend to be fairly cynical, the only negative remark on my annual performance appraisals has always been that I should try to be less cynical. (Personally, I think my cynicism has helped make our team successful, but I digress…) While I may be somewhat cynical, I’m also on the inside of government work. I know my team members and their skills. I know the mission space my software is used in. And I know my background and motivations.
I understand feeling that nothing in government could really be improved so this whole thing must be nothing more than a PR campaign. It’s not. This is possibly the first genuine attempt at meaningfully improving government tech services ever. And there are more people pushing for it than just those in the U.S.D.S. or 18F.
I’m reminded of a quote from The West Wing: “Decisions are made by those who show up.”
The government isn’t just another corporation out to make a profit. It is the thing which makes our country more than some lines on a map. If it’s not working the way you want it to then you have two choices: whine and complain on the Internet about how broken it is or show up and do something about it.
The government is likely to continue to exist for some time to come*. If we’re not trying to make it better then it’s not going to get better. If you know me well you know I am not Mr. Patriotic, and in fact I find patriotism dangerous as it is often used to stifle dissent. This isn’t about being patriotic or that somehow the U.S. is better than other countries. This is about the U.S. government being our government. And it was created upon the idea that the citizens should have some say in how their government operates.
For years technology in government has fallen behind due to thousands of qualified techies deciding they would rather chase piles of money by selling ads and shiny, metal gadgets than trying to make the government better. And I get that it’s not just about the money. Fighting bureaucracy is hard and exhausting.
But if we don’t fight it then it’s only going to get worse. And we can change it. I have changed my small corner of it.
When I started in my job 6 years ago the source code for this group was stored in an ancient deployment of SVN, the applications were built on homegrown J2EE frameworks with no documentation, missing source code, years behind industry best practices, and with release cycles measured in months. The code was like spaghetti, it barely functioned, and the intended users hated it. They disliked it so much that they continued throwing their data into Excel to avoid using the custom software which was supposed to be more useful than Excel. There was no reason for it but culture and lack of energy to fight for change.
When I joined, the existing software group had disbanded. I still haven’t gotten a full story about what happened, but on my first day on the job the “team” consisted of myself, a database administrator, and a team manager. Seeing the catastrophe of code that was in front of me I pushed on the manager to let me build a prototype using a modern framework (what did we have to lose, after all?). It was a smash success and that prototype grew to become one of our core applications.
Now, with the help of willing managers and with our tiny team of software developers (just me, then 2, then 4, now ~7) we’ve made massive changes. We use Git for our version control, we build our applications on popular open-source frameworks and libraries, we follow industry best practices as much as possible, our release cycles are measured in weeks and sometimes days. Our users love the software and constantly ask for more advanced tools. Our management estimates our technology environment to be at least a year ahead of any other organization in our mission space, we have saved the government millions of dollars, and we have saved lives.
Fighting the bureaucracy is hard. Some days you think it would just be easier to give in. It would be easier to give in. But then nothing gets better.
We have enough work to keep a team twice our size busy but we can’t find qualified people to fill the positions. If the qualified people choose money over service then government technology will continue to suffer.
Our government is what we make of it and the decisions are made by those who show up.
We had our little graduation ceremony today for the National Security Leadership Program that I’ve been participating in over the last year. The result is being awarded a Certificate in National Security Affairs.
We got to meet with the Lab’s Deputy Director for Science and Technology, Patricia Falcone, who handed out the certificates. She came to the Lab just a few months ago from the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. She knows Mike!
The certificate program consists of four graduate courses: Deterrence and Coercion (focusing on nuclear weapons), The Role of Intelligence in Security Affairs (focusing on intelligence agencies and operations), Terrorism in Today’s World, and National Security Policy (history, structure, application of U.S. national security organizations).
It was definitely a different way of looking at the world and a very different way of writing papers. A lot of time the papers I wrote I felt ended up being a bit hand-wavy, but then I’m used to writing papers where you have hard data with which to argue your point.
I have no idea what will come of my having participated in this program, but it was a good experience. I enjoyed being back in a class room setting to really focus on interesting topics and at the same time I’m really glad I’m not a full-time student anymore. It was really nice to be able to intelligently and maturely discuss controversial topics of national policy in a setting that doesn’t devolve into name calling or logically defunct arguments.
Having been through it, I kind of wish passing these courses was a minimum requirement for any politician elected to a national office.
It was windy and cool today so we met up with some friends and went to the park for the evening. We picked up some dinner on the way to eat at the park and then play. This park is up on the side of a hill overlooking the valley near the municipal airport so we got to watch the vintage B-17 and B-24 bombers flying around (Part of the Wings of Freedom Tour).
We brought our turtle kite that we’ve only successfully flown once. But, there was plenty of good steady wind today and we had no trouble getting it up in the air. Heather thought it was amazing.
A couple of weeks ago I was lamenting to Jess that we needed to _do_ something. So on Friday the 15th she suggested I take the afternoon off from work and we go to the Oakland Zoo, so we did. Heather had a blast, as she always does. One of her favorite things to do is to hop across the “lily pads” in the kids area. Which she did for like half an hour and made a friend with another little girl. Then she lost her balance and stepped into the pond and soaked her shoe, sock, and pant leg. Which is why she’s only wearing one shoe in these pictures.
Her favorite thing to see was the zebras, but we also stopped to watch the lions, giraffes, camels, and elephants. I had read somewhere that elephant sounds were used as the basis for the Tyrannosaurus Rex sounds in Jurassic park. Well, while we were watching the elephants one of them made this low growling kind of noise which made me think of that tidbit because it was spot on. It’s apparently also true, a lot of other animals were used to (and usually heavily modified).
It was after the zebras that we headed for the children’s area where Heather soaked her foot. After that it was off to see the tortoises and lemurs. Luckily, it was a cool day and the tortoises were lounging in their shelter with the heat lamps. Luckily, I say, because at one point Heather took off running and climbed into the tortoise enclosure before I caught up with her (through one cable-fence and over a short wall; tortoises don’t really need much to keep them in). She only got one leg in before I grabbed her but she was ready to bolt.
After retrieving her we pretended to be tortoises:
And then we rode on a (fake, obviously) tortoise.
The zoo closes at 4 so we headed to as-seen-in-Up! Fentons for dinner and ice-cream:
The movie makes it look like it’s off by itself in the suburbs. That’s a lie. The food was pretty good regardless, but a little pricey for what it was.
(I think Kyle did most of the work, but it’s pretty clear who his muse was.)
