It’s time for the System Administrators at the White House to retire. If they are not eligible to retire then they should be fired or reassigned immediately; they simply don’t have the skills necessary to do the job! Sensitive emails were lost last year during the White House exchange server (email server) hardware upgrade. The old servers should have been imaged and backup tapes made prior to upgrading the equipment. Strike one! According to an article in the Washington Post (1/22/09) the software installed on the White House LAN is six years old. FDCC compliance was mandatory last year. If your shop is not FDCC compliant by now, then it’s a safe bet that the workstations and servers aren’t patched and the security setting aren’t applied either. As of 9 am Monday both Exchange and BES servers are down. They rebooted both machines and no joy! Strike two! The Post article mentioned above says it took a week for a user account to be created. User accounts/logins should be created before the users gets to the White House. After the customer reads the security brief they should be given their user ID and password. The article also said that you could not tell which computers were to be used for what purpose; hopefully they had classification labels on them. Strike three! It’s obvious that the White House IT shop is in need of help. Foreign Service Information Management Specialist could be used on a temporary basis to fill the gap until competent IT professional are brought onboard. Foreign Service Information Management Specialist are given extensive training in all areas of telecommunications. We are trained to install, maintain and operate exchange servers, telephone switches, secure voice and data communications equipment, satellite communications gear and diplomatic pouch/mail. The Obama team must be having a great time working with the current White House IT staff as well. These guys are probably self proclaimed ENTJ’s according to Myers Briggs. The interesting thing about working with IT ENTJ’s is how easily they are offended. The more the customers complain the more they distance themselves from everyone. Classic Geeks! The modern IT professional has to adapt to changes in technology and master a new system every week. The attitude and morale should really be low in the White House IT shop. Team Obama also needs to start putting in waivers with the Secret Service so they can use notebooks with a secure wireless WAN at the White House. http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/potus-notes/2009/Jan/21/ex-bush-official-makes-case-for-no-obama-blackberr/