Agility Loop

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that yet another cybersecurity official has resigned.  This follows the news of the pending resignation of the lead White House cybersecurity official Melissa Hathaway.  Ms. Hathaway’s quote from the Post article:

“I wasn’t willing to continue to wait any longer, because I’m not empowered right now to continue to drive the change,” she said. “I’ve concluded that I can do more now from a different role,” most likely in the private sector.

I think both of these resignations, as well as others, underscores the challenge that the U.S. Government is in trying to keep up in the technology sector…hiring people.  From reading the article, it is fairly clear that Ms. Hathaway’s resignation was a fueled by an inability to work in the system and get the right people hired.  DoD and other agencies desperately need talented, smart people to lead cybersecurity efforts.  However, from personal experience it is a very difficult sell.

From a contractor perspective, I see the folks who are hard working and attempting to be progressive in government.  It is HARD.  And many times, I think that more can be done from the contractor side simply b/c it is MUCH easier to build an effective team around a hard working and progressive leader.  The government’s hiring practices make it very difficult to compete with private industry.  It can sometimes take months to hire someone into the government.  How long does it take a beltway bandit to do the same?  It is measured in days or weeks instead.

Somehow the government needs to come up with a good way of attracting talented engineers to help run their programs.  Otherwise, our cybersecurity stance will continue to fall behind and beltway bandits will continue to take advantage of programs like FCS and NCES.

UPDATE: Looks like Mischel Kwon, the person who resigned, is joining RSA/EMC.