I worked with a core group of people that were responsible for IT in the Executive Office of the President under Bush II, but left in the wake of the missing email scandal. They were some of the most extremely bureaucratic IT people I've ever met. They all were incredibly hard workers, but fundamentally in the box thinkers. The way they implemented Microsoft security could be classified as insane. Locking down stuff to the point where it just wouldn't work any more. Forget being an admin as a developer, you had to ask for temporary permission to launch a service on your server. They had incredibly cozy relationships with the Microsoft sales team, and many ended up working for Microsoft after they left.
Do you have the impression that the missing email scandal was a technical lapse or politically motivated? I know it's widely assumed to have been the latter, but it's often easy to overestimate these things.
I don't have any insider knowledge of the Bush admin's controversy, but I have seen and heard of cases in the corporate world where similarly draconian admin policies that forced users to jump through hoops in the name of security often had the effect of driving users to adopt easier and less restrictive external services instead. I suppose it's not impossible that something similar happened here, but to be honest senior admin officials really should have known better even if that was the case.
It could easily have been either, but I think they knew they had a weak archive strategy, they just didn't do anything about it because it wasn't a priority to save those emails.
Who here can walk into a data center now devoid of its IT staff, and be fully up to speed with a whole new staff?
Even if you're starting out with a detailed and valid plan of the IT transition, you'll still end up wiping and reloading the various boxes involved, resetting the network access control, resetting the switch and controller and server passwords, re-launching whatever mail server(s) you're going to be using, tracing out the occasional unmarked wire or busted connector, and a whole litany of minutia.
And you can't do any of the client-site transition until the old staff and the old IT staff is out of the building, and you have the keys to the facility. Even if you're running your new servers and such remotely and completely in parallel and need only flip DNS and thus you're staging your client gear, how long does it take to carry in and unpack and install and connect it all?
This seems like a detail which should have been examined prior to the handoff. If the domain changeover happened, they obviously considered technology, but somehow overlooked the PC data systems in the White House IT dept.?
I hope if they are thinking about doing an upgrade, they consider Linux. I mean, there is already a large government investment in SELinux; might as well use it.
I think the cost for new computer hardware would be negligible if you compare it with the upside of increased productivity. But of course to get the system running (with or without new hard- and software) will need some time...
