The crime of Avarice....The 2018 AZ primaries and bad IT

It seems that perhaps the laissez-faire attitude toward corporate IT training may finally be coming home to roost.

In the recent 2018 Primary elections in Arizona there was a serious issue with the deployment of voting technology in Maricopa County.  As many as 62 voting sites were affected with estimates of over 100,000 voters being inconvenienced or worse.

For the project, Tempe's Insight (A large IT products and services company) was chosen as the primary contractor.   After looking over this article and supporting sources it seems fairly clear to me what went wrong.

In short....  

Inadequate training, bad management and an over-reliance on outsourcing led to a debacle that will likely end in the courts when all is said and done.

The passage below from the cited article states what I believe to be the crux of the issue.  It relates what a contracted tech experienced during the deployment.

"... training of subcontractors mirrored Insight's "regular" employee training consisting of watching a 15 minute video and a multi-page instruction sheet that was to be printed out.   In addition technicians were required to view another video on the use of Insight's  SmartPhone APP which was clearly identified as being in BETA.   In other words, not in final WORKING form.  This "APP" was to be the "preferred" means of communicating and managing assigned jobs.

At no point in this process was any other training provided to the subcontractors meaning technicians unfamiliar with both the equipment and Maricopa County election procedure were expected to somehow "magically" set up a site without ever having touched the equipment they were responsible for.  The backup plan, that same printed instructional document and vague references to a support hierarchy which as we now know was insufficient."

It's fairly obvious in this all too familiar accounting of the technician's experience that  training was woefully inadequate to the task at hand.  Not to mention support and communication channels.

I've seen this movie so often over the past few decades that I won't even pretend to be surprised.

It takes me back to the days of the "paper certified" IT professional whose training was limited ( by design ) to little more than was necessary to pass the certification exam.  Leading to individuals ill prepared for the challenges they'd face outside of the ideal scenario.

Yes, education is a personal responsibility but when your business model depends on having people ready for what you're going to throw at them you don't leave it to chance.

Or a training video...  IBM started doing that in the 90's and guess what, they don't sell computers any more.

If it's that important you'd better be sure everyone's on the same page.  Unless what Maricopa County saw on Election day is your idea of success.

I'll be honest, my personal opinion of Insight has never been very high.  They evolved from the same swamp that birthed 1000 other flaky computer part vendors back in the 80's.  By the time they became "legitimate" and changed their name to Insight I was just beginning my professional IT career and already wary of them.   

My every brush since has been an experience in either frustration, arrogance or incompetence.  Sometimes all 3 at once.

But then, what can you expect from a business founded on the principles of undercutting the competition at all costs.  

Google Hard Drives International if you want a history lesson on the company's roots.  Not exactly shining.

In any case it appears to me that Insight was once again more interested in profit than doing the job right.  Their defense?  "We're not responsible." 

Look suited morons...

You don't send a tech to something as important as a polling place armed only with inadequate training from a 15 minute video and flaky smartphone app.  

Add to it inconsistencies in the command hierarchy, failed communication channels and scheduling chaos and you get the mess we see here.

All the tenets of a company that puts no value in training, planning or project management.

What's ironic is that such "training" these days is actually considered generous compared to the status quo. 

Worry about nothing but the bottom line and you get bottom of the barrel.  

Insight, don't expect quality if you aren't willing to invest in what it takes to get the job done and that ISN'T a 15 minute video and abandonment of your field techs.

What it IS, is investing in adequate training that includes hands on labs and a firm grasp of the escalation tree (among other things) long BEFORE election day.

Google's IT support Certificate

 

It's understood that to be an IT professional you will never stop learning. Technology and processes change on what seems like a daily basis and the only way to keep up is to...well...keep up!

I've always been a proponent of lifelong learning no matter what you spend your days on.  What I'm not a proponent of is wasting time not to mention hard earned money especially when the only beneficiary is somebody else's bank account.

Which brings me to the newly announced Google IT Support Certificate.

I'll cut to the chase, I don't like it.  For reasons even more egregious than my general disdain for the entire certification industry money mill, my premise is simple.

While most professional IT certifications are of dubious value these days existing primarily for the ancillary revenue stream they provide to their brand at least they aren't treading the same path as so many of those now defunct diploma mills.

Google claims its new certification is literally the magic bullet.  They make outlandish claims about job placement, salaries and the supposed prestige of the Google name on the certification.

It's the 90's all over again where the business of education was more about "business" than "education."  Admission reps sold overpriced degrees that nobody respected ultimately leaving bewildered students holding the bag for 5, sometimes 6 figure debt.

And it's happening again.  Certifications are a tool not a measure of value and a new generation seems poised to fall for it.

Which is why I produced the video below where I detail every lie, misdirection and utter absurdity of this new certification program.

Training is important, where you get that training even more so.