Letter to the Editor
I was reading through J.B. Fields' letter to the editor regarding his analysis of the pay increase issue. He
uses the analogy that a soldier can tolerate indignities in the trenches,
but when incompetence causes him to suffer fire from his own side, his rage
is inconsolable.
No words were better spoken.
In my position, I can say that the documented bandages used by the outmoded
legacy management within the federal government scares me. The average citizen
is completely unaware of the mismanaged problems within the information
technology arena.
Fields' obvious experience with management's failure to recognize the
high-tech workforce is fitting in my view as well. For years I took it upon
myself to learn more than the IT staff, only to stand in the midst of the
coffee-sipping, doughnut-eating group being recognized for its contributions
of downloading data from the mainframe.
After a while, it became embarrassing to be the only one who never got
as much as an "attaboy" while my computer specialist counterparts, whose
only high-tech responsibility is to download data from the mainframe and
import it into a spreadsheet, were praised. Meanwhile, I'm being sent to
classes on network security and using what I've learned to show a systems
administrator how to configure object auditing on a network.
But then those monetary awards are subjective and based on how management
perceives your ability. So why would management place someone who is "not
with the program" in a highly visible, very technical and congressionally
important position such as information system security auditor? Beats me.
But that was the reason they gave me.
I certainly hope you all feel secure. I'm the one "not with the program,"
and I'm the one who management perceives as not being worthy of this annual
recognition. Yet I'm the one responsible (there were only three of us last
time I counted) for auditing the agency's network.
Name withheld upon request