Once upon I
time I was a U.S. Army Intelligence Officer in Iraq. In Iraq my little intelligence organization
had its piece of a $2.7 billion analysis system called DCGS-A. DCGS-A was intended to be a complete solution
for intelligence in the Army, allowing analysts to bring in data from a variety
of sources, aggregate the data, make predictions, and create products for
dissemination all with a single tool.
The problem with DCGS-A was that DCGS-A did not work. Besides being incredibly complex to set up
and use, crashing frequently, not effectively talking to other Army systems,
none of the pieces of DCGS-A worked nearly as well as existing tools used across
many other agencies. Instead of using DCGS-A, my analysts used a collection of
off-the-shelf tools and web-based databases that did the job better, maintained
interoperability with the rest of the intelligence community, and cost far less
than DCGS.
The Army’s
response to widespread criticism? In
short, double-down on DCGS-A, train all intelligence Soldiers from basic
training on to use only DCGS-A, and cease renewing licenses to other
tools. The result is a system that sort
of works when properly configured and coddled.
Set up and operation require a full-time contractor to be present;
uniformed personnel are not even allowed access to certain administrative
settings. This level of complexity
violates a fundamental principal of warfare: simplicity. Military Intelligence organizations still
spend weeks trying to get the technology up and running to support an exercise
or mission. The last piece of equipment
you want in an austere and dangerous environment is a fickle computer system
that no one can configure except for an out-of-shape unarmed civilian with
travel restrictions.
My IT
strategy lesson? Beware of the trap of
seeking out technology for technology’s sake.
If you’ve already make the connection to Zara, you think faster than I
do. I’m sure several very important
people saw a pretty slideshow about all the nice things DCGS-A would do for
them and their Soldiers. Unfortunately
there was no lobby for all of the more elegant and effective solutions already
in use by people more interested in accomplishing a mission than having the newest toy.
Please
consider the old lesson of function over form when making IT decisions as you
go out to be leaders in this great tech world.
Avoid buying tech that looks pretty and sounds cool but does the job
worse. Tools should be simple, easy to
use, and—ideally—cheap. Locking a team
into an ecosystem works great until they have to share with the team in the
office next door, which is locked into a different ecosystem. Stick to the fundamentals. Systems need to be interoperable, and teams
need to be able to share information and communicate. Team members should not spend more time
getting technology to work than they spend doing their jobs. If new technology offers less functionality
or makes it harder to do your job, get rid of it.
Disclaimer:
this work represents the opinion of the author and not that of the U.S. Army,
Boston University, IS714 Table 2, or the guy named Phil who isn’t surveilling
you on your commute.
