51–60 of 125 posts
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Nothing says "we employ the best" like "fixed salary based on tenure and job function"
Do they claim anything like "we employ the best"? (It's probably better that they don't: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html )
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Any plans to standardize agencies tech stacks? Is that even a good idea?
Good luck with that. I was only a government contractor and the amount of blue badges that argue how the other agency is doing it wrong / stupid and they would never use their stack is insane.
I work in GSA as well, and I have a lot of trouble getting software approved that you use all the time, even getting nginx approved took a long time. Forget about vagrant, virtual box, recent versions of python, etc... How were you able to get ATOs to operate most of your systems and work through these policies?
Isn't the the "Platform-as-a-service" logo the Amazon AWS logo? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Am...
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You forgot to mention your slack: chat.cloud.gov, where people can come ask questions, right?
https://chat.18f.gov/?channel=devops-public , actually. EDIT: Gaaah, sorry, down right now for reasons. Will post here again when it's back up. Sorry!
Watchdog: 18F's Slack security exposed GSA data https://fcw.com/articles/2016/05/13/slack-security-18f.aspx
It was enough of a problem that the reaction was to probably take it down and take a hard look at everything before being it back up. Maybe a hosted rocket.chat will be the replacement to allow them more granular control over security.
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Any plans to standardize agencies tech stacks? Is that even a good idea?
Good luck with that. I was only a government contractor and the amount of blue badges that argue how the other agency is doing it wrong / stupid and they would never use their stack is insane.
This is a major reason for cloud.gov going after the FedRAMP JAB P-ATO recognition. "JAB" is the Joint Authorization Board comprised of the CIOs of the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the General Services Administration. Having a triple-sign-off from three CIOs under a consistently applied set of standards is the highest social proof you can get in government that will convince other agency CIOs that it is OK to use your stuff at their agency. Normally it's vendors that go through this program... We're among the few to do it for a government-developed-and-operated service, and the first to do it for something as generally useful as a PaaS.
The other aspect is making sure everything we do to deploy and document the platform's compliance is open source and subject to scrutiny, so they can check for themselves... and ideally contribute in areas they think it could be better, of course!
I work in GSA as well, and I have a lot of trouble getting software approved that you use all the time, even getting nginx approved took a long time. Forget about vagrant, virtual box, recent versions of python, etc... How were you able to get ATOs to operate most of your systems and work through these policies?
This is actually a great time to talk about this stuff, but maybe easier on email (firstname.lastname@gsa.gov) than HN. Drop me a line!
I work in GSA as well, and I have a lot of trouble getting software approved that you use all the time, even getting nginx approved took a long time. Forget about vagrant, virtual box, recent versions of python, etc... How were you able to get ATOs to operate most of your systems and work through these policies?
They cheat. Edit: they ignore a lot of the rules that GSA (among others) mandate the rest of the government follow. One great example is cloud.gov, operating on the public Internet without finishing the fedramp approval process. It also doesn't comply with the TIC requirements GSA pushes on the rest of the .gov. The hard problems in government IT are being able to pay enough to attract top talent and dealing with all…
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What sorts of jobs are available there and what's the salary like? I currently do devops at a large Internet content company near Dulles and I've got federal government experience from many years ago.
See: https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/ I'll let @bmogilefsky describe the jobs. @18F as a whole hires engineers, designers, product managers, content writers, journalists, folks with non-traditional cross-functional backgrounds, etc. Salary depends on job grade. See [1] for an explanation of the grades within 18F. Then see the GS pay scale [2] to figure out the pay for your grade in your region. [1]: https://pages.1…
I'd love to get involved, I'm mainly focused in software engineering. It seems like a great cause to partake in.
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This is actually a great time to talk about this stuff, but maybe easier on email (firstname.lastname@gsa.gov) than HN. Drop me a line!
Lol, why don't we discuss it in the open?
https://pages.18f.gov/before-you-ship/
And there's a GitHub repo with an issue tracker that would make for better conversation capturing than HN: