(Acting Director of OPM Beth Cobert).

There were some extraordinary speakers at the big Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems conference in Atlanta this week. The Director of National Intelligence, the Director of DIA, two four-star Combatant Commanders, and people who actually understand all this cyber stuff. Or claim to.

You have to admire the nerve, I suppose. Down at the big cyber conference in Atlanta the Agency people convinced Beth Cobert, Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management, to come and address the assembled Government and Contractor audience. She got a nice introduction and stepped to the podium at the front of the cavernous darkened hall at the Atlanta Convention Center’s Building “A.”

Her message was about information sharing in the Government, of all things.

Her focus on IT naturally is only one part of her role as Acting Director, a position she assumed when her former boss, Katherine Archuleta resigned in humiliation. Beth stepped up in , which she has been in since 2013. However, she has helped multiple agencies through streamlining projects, enhancing customer service, and improving the technology used within their departments. Given her decades of private sector experience, she has been happy to help the government bring their IT projects up to speed.
She therefore was on the job in June 2015 when OPM discovered that the background investigations (Form SF-86) of current, former, and prospective Federal employees and contractors had been stolen, probably by the Chinese government.

That includes sensitive information, including the Social Security Numbers of 21.5 million individuals, including 19.7 million people who applied for security clearances and an additional 1.8 million non-applicants, primarily spouses of applicants. They might also have lost interviews conducted by field investigators and approximately 5.6 million sets of fingerprints. Usernames and passwords that background investigation applicants used to fill out their background investigation forms were also stolen.

It was breathtaking at the time, and I still view everything I see on the computer screen with a jaundiced eye, since with the data that was stolen there is the real threat that a convincing note from a friend could actually be from the People’s Liberation Army Uni 61348, their elite hackers.

Up on the screen next to the podium, Ms Cobert smiled a twenty foot grin and said: “When I had the opportunity to join the president’s team to help the federal government deliver great service to the American people, I jumped at the chance to take the lessons I had learned in my many years in the private sector – including on how IT can transform organizations for the better – and put them to work.”

“The importance of …reaching across these boundaries- is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned,” she said in her prepared remarks, the giant projection of her face eerily hovering above the tiny figure at the podium. “We in the civilian side of the world need to leverage your valued expertise to help us protect that information. Just as OPM has partnered with you (Military and intelligence) in our effort to secure our systems, we need to find ways to learn from you and to take a whole-of-government approach.”

Joe was sitting next to me, and he muttered, sotto voce, “She was the school teacher from “Charlie Brown!” Wha wha wha…”

I had to laugh, since he irony of the situation could not have been more apparent. OPM was sharing information, all right. And it was our information, not theirs.
“They certainly shared everything with everybody,” I said.

“She infuriates me. She acknowledged that she sent letters to almost everyone in the audience about having lost our personal information, but not to worry we are working of fixing it so it won’t happen again.”

“The Chinese don’t need to do it again They got everything the first time. We will be looking over our cyber-shoulders for the rest of our lives.”

The Acting Director concluded her remarks by saying her agency was working to share information as widely as possible, using new hiring authorities to entice people making the big bucks on the commercial side of the cyber world, and come up with some new titles that reflect what people are doing.

None of it is going to get our information back, though. There was a fair amount of applause at the end of her remarks, since most of it was fairly common sense, and I said that to Joe.

He grimaced. “Common sense has got very little to do with any of this,” he said. “It is the Government, after all.”

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com