War of Wits

Part of the federal government’s supposed crackdown on illegal immigration and one of the few absurdities that Republicans capitulated to was this cockamamie notion of a ‘virtual’ border fence. Apparently, Congress lacks the political will to put real physical barriers in place to stop this invasion. That, or they’re just plum lazy. Probably a smattering of both, but it’s the laziness that concerns me. This culture of Congressional couch-potatoism has caused them to take what is arguably the easy way out, relying on the crutch of technology to do that for which they lack the spine.

It matters not if it is software that models weather, runs the neighborhood ATM or sends our astronauts into space; the underlying principles governing the testing processes to discover and remediate defects remains the same.

In a recent AP article entitled “Glitch Renders ‘Virtual’ Border Fence Unusable”, it was reported that the much-anticipated virtual fence project to secure the border is 3 months beyond the scheduled implementation date despite the government having paid the contractor Boeing roughly ¾ of the bill thus far.

There have been and always will be latent software defects waiting to be discovered or technical issues we imperfect humans have not accounted for. Boeing does not necessarily bear blame for that. It is the human element of the design process that bears blame for the problems that plague the project and it appears that Boeing is being forthright about them. In contrast, in response to legitimate national security and taxpayer concerns, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff is misinformed about what is going on with this project.

A term that is highly overused by both politicians and the media these days is software “glitch”. Software is not susceptible to “glitches”.

Ever.

In the industry we call them bugs or more precisely, defects. Those of us without egos have no problem describing them as such. A glitch affects hardware and implies something transient in nature, such as a momentary power loss or a network bottleneck, while a defect is an actual design flaw. What Chertoff is describing -failure during system integration- is more a process failure due to software design flaws, definitely not a glitch.

Chertoff discusses “acceptance testing” in October, where they’ll “kick the tires” again to ensure it’s not a “lemon”. Who is Chertoff kidding? Acceptance testing, or “kicking the tires” implies you’ve already done anywhere from 3 to 8 other test iterations, or -to use Chertoff’s analogy- had a mechanic go over the entire vehicle in great detail. It also means that the mechanic found nothing of concern. That being the case, if you kicked the tires and the wheels fell off, you had a rotten mechanic.

The testing of the individual components is what should be just the very first of many steps in the testing process. The issues Chertoff described integrating them are severe enough that no one should even be thinking about acceptance testing until the defects have been resolved and retested to the satisfaction of the same individuals that discovered them. Only then should the project proceed to acceptance testing. Boeing’s spokesperson readily admitted they were still working to resolve the remaining issues and yet Chertoff is discussing acceptance testing.

I have seen numerous software projects that were intended to enhance safety or productivity either get canceled outright, go way over budget or get doomed to a life of constant maintenance until they are replaced by even costlier, more complex solutions. The failures always involve the human element, but rarely -if ever- the humans who design or code the software. More often than not is is due to either the inability of those tasked with conveying their requirements to do so unambiguously or the imposition of pressures on developers to meet politcally-oriented or unrealistic deadlines. Typically this role of antagonist is filled by the end users of the software, in this case, DHS. The government is becoming quite adept at hiding its laziness by creating yet another multi-million dollar software behemoth to do that which it already has the enforcement mechanisms to do itself, if it had a pair. They are now using technology to go after veterans and all sorts of draconian measures.

Technology is not the magic bullet that government makes it out to be. Computer software is only as good as the human beings behind it. Humans learn from their mistakes and adapt. Computers are beginning to with the help of humans, but they will never be as imaginative. In the cases of both border security and illegal immigration, the only logical solution is physical; human beings and barriers, not a ‘virtual fence’.