The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson(washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpost.com
The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-pentagons-procurement-system-is-so-broken-they-are-calling-on-watson/2016/03/18/a6891158-ec6a-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html
27 comments
It seems like IBM is using the Watson name to re-brand itself in an attempt to turn their business around. So that "using Watson" is now synonymous with "hiring IBM consultants".
Ten years ago this headline would have read, "Pentagon hires IBM to help optimize procurement". But the Watson brand has become popular with the media, in large part due to the exposure from the Jeopardy exhibition (which is seeming like a better and better investment in terms of marketing returns). I'm not sure if the re-branding will be enough to really change IBM's fortunes, but does seem to be helping them in the short term. As companies get better at using open source tools and expert knowledge to leverage their own data, it's going to get harder for tech consulting companies of all types.
Ten years ago this headline would have read, "Pentagon hires IBM to help optimize procurement". But the Watson brand has become popular with the media, in large part due to the exposure from the Jeopardy exhibition (which is seeming like a better and better investment in terms of marketing returns). I'm not sure if the re-branding will be enough to really change IBM's fortunes, but does seem to be helping them in the short term. As companies get better at using open source tools and expert knowledge to leverage their own data, it's going to get harder for tech consulting companies of all types.
NLP is perfect for understanding purchasing requirements, rules, laws, etc.... You right, watson is just a task specific tuned supercomputer, but I see this as a good fit.
NLP pretty much has to be task-specific, but the task-specific NLP that will solve the Pentagon's particular problem almost certainly doesn't exist until someone writes it.
When you describe "Watson" as a task-specific supercomputer, if you mean the Watson that played Jeopardy, that's certainly not what they're going to be using. "Watson" here means hiring IBM consultants to write them some software that runs on IBM hardware.
When you describe "Watson" as a task-specific supercomputer, if you mean the Watson that played Jeopardy, that's certainly not what they're going to be using. "Watson" here means hiring IBM consultants to write them some software that runs on IBM hardware.
IBM people would be the first to tell you that the mega-rack "Watson" is not the IBM Watson * suite of various products. They said it just needs a few U of rack space.
I don't think it's that odd. People talk about Siri and Cortana the same way.
But Siri and Cortana are sold to consumers, I'm happy with my day to day life being made up of over-simplifications because, generally, if those things don't work it doesn't really matter.
However, in large organizations, dealing with fairly critical things, it just seems like over-simplifying the solution is a recipe for disaster.
That's not to say that Watson-type solutions have no place in the world. The recent stuff re: health and diagnostics - awesome. It's complexity you can't fix because people are living organisms so you just need to drag in the data and essentially evaluate your best guess.
But where companies are using Watson to mask their needlessly complex processes or, as an example, banks are using Watson to decipher their needlessly complex loan schemes and agreement terms, those are problems that will only get harder to solve if you don't deal with the cause of the complexity (something within the scope of their control) as soon as possible.
That being said, it's probably good business for IBM because if your multi-billion dollar investment in IBM hardware is insufficient to deal with the mess of policy that has grown unchecked over the years, masked by a more friendly interface, then you can always buy more servers and more hosting...
However, in large organizations, dealing with fairly critical things, it just seems like over-simplifying the solution is a recipe for disaster.
That's not to say that Watson-type solutions have no place in the world. The recent stuff re: health and diagnostics - awesome. It's complexity you can't fix because people are living organisms so you just need to drag in the data and essentially evaluate your best guess.
But where companies are using Watson to mask their needlessly complex processes or, as an example, banks are using Watson to decipher their needlessly complex loan schemes and agreement terms, those are problems that will only get harder to solve if you don't deal with the cause of the complexity (something within the scope of their control) as soon as possible.
That being said, it's probably good business for IBM because if your multi-billion dollar investment in IBM hardware is insufficient to deal with the mess of policy that has grown unchecked over the years, masked by a more friendly interface, then you can always buy more servers and more hosting...
My understanding is procurement is and remains broken because there are entrenched powers who benefit greatly from that situation. It is working as designed by the people who wrote the rules, bringing great profit to the intended recipients. No change of the system will be allowed that threatens this property.
Could you elaborate on who benefits from a poor procurement system? Does it benefit them in that in conforms to their ideology, or does it do so tangibly? I'm familiar with people being in favor of government being cumbersome, but I can't picture how someone within government who has the power to effect this change would support this.
Edit: 'this' in the last sentence ambiguously refers to the nauseatingly lengthy and tedious process currently in place.
Edit: 'this' in the last sentence ambiguously refers to the nauseatingly lengthy and tedious process currently in place.
The complexity of the current procurement system means that only giant contractors with an office of red tape experts can effectively bid on the big contracts. These giant contractors get giant and hugely profitable contracts which would have required more competitive bids with a less broken procurement system. In turn the giant contractors reward the politicians that keep the system working in their favor with campaign contributions, hefty speaking fees, cushy positions after leaving elected office, and so on.
Mostly yes. They also don't actually do much of the real work, they subcontract that out to smaller firms after taking their rent.
Via http://warisboring.com/articles/the-pentagons-pricey-culture... :
"The root of the problem is the revolving door between the Pentagon and private military contractors.
Remember the big white blimp that broke free from its mooring in Maryland last year and floated across rural Pennsylvania? That’s a good example of an underperforming and expensive military program the government should have canceled years ago.
In fact, the Army did try to cut the program, officially called JLENS, in 2010 — only to have then-vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, rescue it. Shortly after his retirement from the Marine Corps in 2011, Cartwright joined the board of directors of Raytheon, the prime contractor for — you guessed it — the JLENS.
"The root of the problem is the revolving door between the Pentagon and private military contractors.
Remember the big white blimp that broke free from its mooring in Maryland last year and floated across rural Pennsylvania? That’s a good example of an underperforming and expensive military program the government should have canceled years ago.
In fact, the Army did try to cut the program, officially called JLENS, in 2010 — only to have then-vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, rescue it. Shortly after his retirement from the Marine Corps in 2011, Cartwright joined the board of directors of Raytheon, the prime contractor for — you guessed it — the JLENS.
Support the change, retire from government, get a cushy job on the board of some defense contractor.
Edit:
To support what I say check out Raytheon's board of directors[1], maybe a third of them retired from the military, worked from the DoD, and one guy was the principal White House foreign policy advisor to President George W. Bush.
[1]http://investor.raytheon.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=84193&p=irol-go...
Edit:
To support what I say check out Raytheon's board of directors[1], maybe a third of them retired from the military, worked from the DoD, and one guy was the principal White House foreign policy advisor to President George W. Bush.
[1]http://investor.raytheon.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=84193&p=irol-go...
Here's something fun to digest.
> “While our acquisition system is very complex, it is document based. . .It’s unreasonable to expect that a single individual or even a group of individuals to be able to fully understand all of the relevant documents to answer a specific question.”
Total pages: 1,897 pages
Total pages in tax code: 16,845 pages
Total pages in Obamacare: 11,000 pages
> “While our acquisition system is very complex, it is document based. . .It’s unreasonable to expect that a single individual or even a group of individuals to be able to fully understand all of the relevant documents to answer a specific question.”
Total pages: 1,897 pages
Total pages in tax code: 16,845 pages
Total pages in Obamacare: 11,000 pages
The key difference is that the tax code and the ACA cover very large surface areas of which only a subset applies to any one player. FAR is largely applicable to any vendor, regardless of contract size, and requires onerous documentation at every step.
Machines making decisions due to our own man made complexity, wonder when this will become the norm for all facets of government, until the machines create their own massive complexity making it even more difficult for humans thus we end up completely relying on them.
It's interesting, or perhaps sad, how ripe for abuse this is. Funnel billions of dollars into a black box that then results in some amount of "stuff" being delivered to various places. The fact that they are using a system so complex that humans can't individually understand it means there's not really any accountability.
Maybe a few years from now, we'll be seeing the developers working on Watson deciding to retire to private islands at the age of 40.
Maybe a few years from now, we'll be seeing the developers working on Watson deciding to retire to private islands at the age of 40.
We can only hope, at least those decision chains can be audited.
THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE
First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite – just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.1
In the book, you don’t discover until you turn the page that the author of this passage is Theodore Kaczynski – the Unabomber.
First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite – just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.1
In the book, you don’t discover until you turn the page that the author of this passage is Theodore Kaczynski – the Unabomber.
On a slightly tangentially related note, I was astonished to hear a couple of years back that the UK has legislation written in the proprietary dialect of some patented Oracle software:
http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/public-sector/058991.htm...
http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/public-sector/058991.htm...
Why are they throwing even more complex solutions at the complicated procurement procedure?
Couldn't the solution be to simplify the procedure itself?
Couldn't the solution be to simplify the procedure itself?
No one wants a simple process.
The craptastic [1-4] F-35 has ties to 42 states plus Puerto Rico if I counted correctly [0]. That's one of the reasons why it can't be canceled.
The defense contractors want the systems confusing so they can spread out production across as many congressional districts as possible in order to maintain clout. (A vote to cancel the Radioactive Ferret Launcher, is a vote kill 50 jobs in your hometown!). Also confusion allows for ample padding.
Another problem that isn't talked about is that since World War II, and especially since the end of the draft, the number of people that have seen how the military actually works, is pretty small, yet at the same time it's standing as an institution has increased. Arguably this is because people only see the recruiting videos, and not the political bureaucracy that the military (and all large organizations) actually is. Congress doesn't push back when the military and their contractors do... well asinine stuff. Say try to make a one-size-fits all fighter that, that has never worked. Or makes a carrier without testing it.[5]
[0] https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact-map [1] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/everything-wrong-with-the-f... [2] http://warisboring.com/articles/the-f-35-is-still-horribly-b... [3] http://warisboring.com/articles/we-have-proof-the-u-s-air-fo... [4] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/test-pilot-admits-the-f-35-... [5] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-11/navy-order...
The craptastic [1-4] F-35 has ties to 42 states plus Puerto Rico if I counted correctly [0]. That's one of the reasons why it can't be canceled.
The defense contractors want the systems confusing so they can spread out production across as many congressional districts as possible in order to maintain clout. (A vote to cancel the Radioactive Ferret Launcher, is a vote kill 50 jobs in your hometown!). Also confusion allows for ample padding.
Another problem that isn't talked about is that since World War II, and especially since the end of the draft, the number of people that have seen how the military actually works, is pretty small, yet at the same time it's standing as an institution has increased. Arguably this is because people only see the recruiting videos, and not the political bureaucracy that the military (and all large organizations) actually is. Congress doesn't push back when the military and their contractors do... well asinine stuff. Say try to make a one-size-fits all fighter that, that has never worked. Or makes a carrier without testing it.[5]
[0] https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact-map [1] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/everything-wrong-with-the-f... [2] http://warisboring.com/articles/the-f-35-is-still-horribly-b... [3] http://warisboring.com/articles/we-have-proof-the-u-s-air-fo... [4] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/test-pilot-admits-the-f-35-... [5] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-11/navy-order...
Something tells me this can't possibly end well.
Realistically its like 10+ racks filled with POWER systems loaded up with terabytes of RAM running SUSE Linux using Apache Hadoop for distributed computing, then some IBM Proprietary software solutions + a few other open bits and pieces (ie Apache UIMA) cobbled together to get something which behaves as though it understands natural language.
Honestly if you put most data-centric systems on a platform with dozens, if not hundreds, of POWER CPUs with 8-16 cores a piece and 4 threads/core and then put the entire data store into RAM so you could get at it quickly, I suspect that you could fool most people into thinking there was intelligence behind it, not just raw computing power.