Joint Officer Portal

JOM-JQS has a portal with all the references you need for joint certification.  Of all places, it's hosted on APAN:

https://wss.apan.org/s/JSOFUN/jom_jqs/SitePages/Home.aspx

Let's stop the Sailor Worship

Are we worshiping our military members, to their own detriment?  Benjamin Summers seems to think so.  In his Washington Post article, he argues that he, and most military members, aren't heroes, shouldn't be worshiped, and that the whole "hero worship" is getting in the way of making real, needed changes to the DoD.  His article is Army centric, but I think it hits similar problems on the Navy side, with what I'll call "Sailor Worship."

We do a hard job in the Navy.  Our Sailors are constantly deployed, all the time, well before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan happened, and we'll continue to be deployed after they end.  We are the Nation's 9-1-1 service, responding quickly to any problem around the world.  It's a hard job, and most military members are underpaid, although once you factor in benefits, it tends to come out OK in the end.  For the hard work and the sacrifice, I'm OK with getting the occasional parade, free meal, or airline upgrade.

Get updated on MilConnect

 On a machine with a CAC reader, go to https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/milconnect

Log in with your email CAC. The first sign-in link is in the upper right (a red button), then you get to a page with three login pages, where you will pick the middle one.

After logging in, click on "Update Global Address List (GAL)" in the upper right. Update your information, then scroll down and click on submit. Be sure you do the same thing for the "MIL" tab as well. AND, update your SIPR and JWICS emails if you have them, since supposedly that updates the white pages for your account.

BTW, I'm not the one making up this requirement, you can read the NAVADMIN here:

http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/reference/messages/Documents/NAVADMINS/NAV2014/NAV14139.txt

Some accountability with drinking

Over dinner, my wife relayed an interesting conversation she had with the wife of an Air Force Officer I know from college.  He had volunteered over the weekend to sit on a hotline to drive drunk service members home, and wanted to see if I would volunteer as well.  My wife kindly declined for me, since I had watch, but she was rather irate at being asked in the first place.

In her mind, it was simply enabling bad behavior.  She couldn't understand how Sailors could afford enough alcohol to get drunk, yet then not have enough sense to arrange a ride before or pay for a cab.  She was then further insulted when it was apparently my responsibility to give up my time on the weekend when I already work later than most of the problem children.

At that point, I realized how much brain washing we do in the Navy.  How often do we glorify the guys that sacrifice their time for such endeavors, and never ask whether we are simply enabling the behavior in the first place?  It's similar to our glorification of the guy that spends all his time at work, letting his family life completely deteriorate while destroying his subordinate's initiative. 

NOOCS Update for April (yes, it's late)

NOOCS manual was updated in April.

- Added 6209 subspecialty for Network Operations and Technology
- Deleted the 6201 subspecialty
- Added a 0000 NOBC for transients, trainees and prisoners
- Added the BYB and BYC AQDs for Requirements Management Certification. It's a lot of DAU courses and a flag endorsement
- Modified the HD1 AQD to have a PQS and 12 months on the job for a Recruiting Operations Officer
- Modified the JOM AQD to allow officers to be detailed to a billet without needing the MSOC course, however it is suggested they get it within 12 months of arrival
- Added LG1 and LG2 AQDs for SWOs who are navigators
- Added the TP1 AQD to reflect qualifying the Strategic Sealift PQS and getting the warfare qualification

USNI Essay Number 2

 

I sent two essays to USNI. The second one is below, which covers my thoughts on what DISA's role should be in the Joint Information Environment.

The reality is the network structure of today reflects a different time and a different place...that's why JIE, the Joint Information Environment, is so critical in the future for us. We have got to get to a defensible architecture.

- ADM Michael Rogers, during his Senate confirmation hearing

  The Department of Defense needs to completely rethink the roles that the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), National Security Agency (NSA), U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) and the military services currently occupy concerning the acquisition, maintenance, upgrade, certification and  employment of information systems and the personnel who operate these systems in the Joint Information Environment.  The current setup reflects a now-ancient view of information systems as simply supporting warfighting capability, and this setup makes us vulnerable to our future adversaries.  Offensive cyber and electronic attack capabilities require their own specialized tactics and trained operators to be effective.  Even purely supporting information systems, if lost, can cripple the decision making of a commander.  Our view of information systems must completely shift, similar to how we viewed submarine warfare before and after World War Two.

Generic Advice Is Dumb

I despise generic advice, and the worst sampling of this is in high school graduation speeches.  Every graduation speech I've heard is full of lot's of worthless phrases.  We hear that we should believe in ourselves, work hard, and above all, "do the right thing," since apparently so many of us set out in life to do the wrong things that we need to constantly hear this.

The Navy is sadly no better.  I tend to be very focused in my advice to people.  When I had new Ensigns check in, I would layout my expectations of them for their first year:

- Complete check in within 2 weeks
- Get qualified on their job within 90 days
- Get qualified Information Warfare Officer in one year
- Send all correspondence (EVALs, awards, chits, etc.) about their Sailors on their Department Head's timeline

Only after they were doing all that should they consider a major collateral duty, a masters degree, or any other significant effort.

Know, don't rage, about the system

 My news feed today gave me an article about how Eric Cantor lost his primary bid to Tea Party upstart Dave Brat. 

This is not the first time this has happened.  I first saw it back in 2010, when Mike Lee defeated Senator Bob Bennett in the Republican Utah primary.  Elected leaders, both Republican and Democrat, have been undermined not in actual elections, but in the primary process.

Putting all politics aside, this is the perfect example of how knowing your environment and the rules can make you a very dangerous opponent.  There have always been calls for an "outsider" to be elected to Congress, but unless you had previous fame (e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger), you had almost zero chance.  The primary process has its own rules that makes it fairly hard for outsiders to influence.  Thus, most complaints and calls for action were simply ignored by the folks on the inside.

The Tea Party has completely stood the primary system on its head.  Rather than simply complain about how broken the process is, they learned all the rules and then used them to promote their own candidates.  Elected officials that could previously blow off their complaints might find themselves without a job, or at least a very difficult reelection bid.  Using the rules to promote unknown candidates isn't unique or even new.  Abraham Lincoln beat out popular candidates like William Seward in the Republican primaries by manipulating the system, going so far as to deliberately change seating arrangements at the National Convention in Chicago to purposely divide his opponents supporters from each other. 

Rethinking your check in process

At my last command, I owned the command indoc program.  My staff and I spent a considerable amount of time streamlining the process so that new check-ins would get into their shops as quickly as possible, while also being ready to start work.  One of my second class petty officers got tired of the sheer amount of paper that was being printed for one time use stuff, such as the Information Assurance certificates from NKO.  He started having new check-ins save the files electronically and drop them into a shared folder on Intelink's Inteldocs website.  He set up the folder to email him when a file was added, which prompted him to login and update that Sailors record.

Overall, we eliminated 800+ pages a year, plus we cut out about 200 man hours of work.  I don't know how much toner we saved, but it had to be significant, not to mention the time it takes to track down a cartridge and replace it.