Federal IT Budget and POTUS' whopping phone bill

I was looking up budget information related to a government project I'm working on when I came across the VUE-IT, which lets you take a look into federal government's IT budget.

The master spreadsheet is quite shocking, both in the amount of money spent overall, and the sheer number of items on which they are spent.  The Department of Defense (DoD) has just over 2300 line items, each of which can includes something as big as DISN (the DoD's communications network) or CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team, which helps keep computers safe).

One item I was really floored by is "007-97-06-12-02-4017-00" (Google that, you'll get the spreadsheet).  The figure is well over $150M and it's the budget for the White House Communications Agency.  I know the president talks a lot and needs to get great reception even while traveling, but spending $4.75 a second 24/365?  Using a satellite phone is far cheaper than that, and POTUS owns his own satellites!  Someone needs to read the fine print, realize they got screwed and switch to a different carrier.  I mean, come on- how bad could the termination fees possibly be?

Can you imagine your monthly phone bill being above ten million dollars?  I think if the US president is going to keep talking, texting and surfing at this rate, his chief of staff  should consider upgrading to an unlimited plan.  And for heaven's sake please go easy on those 1-900 calls.  Remember the words of William Jefferson Clinton "when you're the president, you don't have to pay for it."

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PS- yes, this was written in a very silly way because that's the style you get from my current mood.  I am however quite interested in someone taking a serious look at this specific budget item because as hard as I try I can't justify it.  I assume that all White House comms are included, but most of that is land-based and running even a large PBX won't set you back that far.  I assume the significant 24/365 communications of the good folks at Treasury are not included in this figure.  I suspect that AF1 comms are similarly handled by the 89th Airlift.  This leaves me with international calling and a whole lot of encrypted domestic cellular traffic.  It just doesn't add up to me.

IT job searching? Here's a cheat sheet! A book skimview

IT Made E-Z: A Guide to the Information Technology Industry
by Patrick H. Bowman ISBN:9780978775308
Electronic & Database Publishing, Inc. © 2006 (114 pages)


This book title came to me in the "new titles" email I get through my corporate subscription to Books24x7. I love this subscription as well as the Safari one, which contains the most awesome of all technical publishers- O'Reilly.

The book is a guide to Human Resources personnel who are recruiting for IT positions. Naturally, it's all dumbed down, yet mostly accurate ("Assembler" isn't a programming language, "Assembly" is) and covers a wide range of issues from various areas of IT.

Why bother with the book?
* If you have trouble conveying your knowledge of IT to non-technical folks, grab this book and see how the author does.
* Use it to create bullet lists of subjects, so that you don't get points deducted for ignoring the obvious.
* Fight fire with fire. The person interviewing you may be using this book. Nobody technical today really cares what ISDN and DSL stand for. But an HR person holding this book might think it's important enough to demand a correct answer. Great for phone interviews where you can just flip to a marked page to rattle off a list of "common databases" ("IMS/DB"? I've never heard of that one! Access on the top of the list? And where the hell are MySQL and PostgreSQL?)

Don'ts:
* Don't use this as a study material. If you don't know better than the text, find a real book.
* Do not use this book with anyone knowledgeable- it's incorrect and being wrong is worse than not being right. They understand where you are coming from, and know you're nervous. Be yourself, be informative but be thorough. Also- try to sound like someone they'd want to work with.
* Don't bring this into a face-to-face interview (just in case someone needs to be told).



Postscript: "book skimview"?

I didn't read the book, I skimmed it. I checked out it's table of contents, read a few pages into a couple chapters. I don't have time for this book, since I'm not looking for a job, nor would I really want to use it.