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Presence Systems Number One On Federal Wish List

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jun 25, 2007 05:02 PM
from the you-know-where-i'm-at dept.
Communications IT
coondoggie writes to tell us that top among feature requests for any next-gen communications system among federal network managers is the ability to identify and notify employees in real time. "Federal interest in presence technologies 'may come from the fact that agencies want to know where their workforce is to be able to look at the effectiveness and the efficiency of what they're able to do,' says Aaron Heffron, vice president of Market Connections. 'They want to be in contact with them at all times.'"
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  • Because gosh... (Score:3, Funny)

    by CaptainPatent (1087643) on Monday June 25 2007, @05:05PM (#19641789) Journal
    The government just loves to give citizens privacy.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by mashade (912744)
      We're talking about employees here, not (necessarily) citizens.

      Anyway, I think gps combined with push messaging would pretty much fit the bill here, in simplistic terms. I'm not sure where the 'Presence Systems' buzzwords came from.
      • We're talking about employees here, not (necessarily) citizens.

              Employees lose their citizenship when they work?

              Non citizens who have valid visas/work permits are not protected by the same laws you are?

              I don't get why you had to make the distinction between an employee and a "citizen".

        • Re:Because gosh... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by mooingyak (720677) on Monday June 25 2007, @05:37PM (#19642317)
          I don't get why you had to make the distinction between an employee and a "citizen".

          Because it's a much different issue if an employer wants to track their employees while they're supposed to be working than a government tracking its citizens. That the employer in question is the federal government should not matter.

            • We're sorry. You seem to be under the misconception that employer workplaces are sovereign nations unto themselves and the humans inside of those sovereign nation compounds are no longer afforded the rights and protections of the Constitution. You're wrong.

              You've obviously never contemplated how the US military, a congressman's office, or a federal embassy work, have you?

              The US Constitution has limits on the laws that the government may enact; it has no limits on the terms of employment that the government or a private entity may impose, although the government has seen fit to enact such laws for the benefit of its citizens.

              At work, if you can't justify the time you spend not working, then you've just got a shitty job.

            • And tracking firemen or military personnel in danger zones is a threat to their privacy?
              YES!... But it has legitimate reasons for it... Not all systems are about accounting for toilet paper rolls...
              • The same system of reasoning can be appropriately applied to the military endeavors in Afghanistan and Iraq.

                No, it can't.

                For your interpretation to have merit, not only would a substantial majority of the federal government need to be as amoral as the wost governments in history, but they would also have to be so amazingly competent so as to hide this from neutral, disinterested observers.

                If you have ever filed your taxes, much less served in the military, you know that "amazingly competent" is not a phrase

                  • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                    by Miseph (979059)
                    Perhaps he was implying that the people directly responsible for destroying things in spectacular fashion (read: the actual troops) are very competent at doing so, but that as one gets further away from that job description (read: officers, chain of command) one also gets further away from competence. In other words, it's a bunch of guys who are really competent at breaking stuff who are horribly mismanaged and frequently tasked to things which involve not breaking things.

                    That's pretty much the same story I
              • Some people don't work for large nameless corporations. When you're the only tech guy at a small business, and you go on vacation, everything that breaks while you're on vacation either results in a phone call to you, or a phone call to the Geek Squad. I wouldn't let the Geek Squad close enough to my computers to hit them with a 10' pole. I'll take the phone call.

                Granted, small companies don't have the budget for Presence Systems. But someone mentioned doctors. Sometimes, a doctor really does need to b
                  • Well, when one of my computers breaks at home, the same guy fixes it as the guy who does the company computers. Does that count? I've got all the responsibility for the computers, both good and bad. If something breaks, it is my job to fix it. On the other hand, when I need something, it's maybe three days, tops, before the funds have been allocated to buy whatever I need. Now, I can only assume that abusing this power would lead to repercussions, but I really don't have the desire to risk ruining a go
                    • I'm willing to fix things when they break, even if I'm not actually supposed to be there, because I get paid for the time when I am supposed to be there whether anything is broken or not. Things so nebulous as 'research' count, and that's the sort of thing I generally do on my own time for free anyway. I get to do my job apart from all the corporate politics bullshit. No one tries to deny me the things I need. And the amount that I get called in (which I do get paid for) is directly related to how robus
    • I work for the Department of Transportation as an intern and I can vouch that they are definitely trying to keep tabs on EVERYTHING that you do. We have a ridiculous database that crashes every day that we have to 'create a new task' in every time we change what we're working on. They're very insistent on it, despite the fact that we could be working on 10 different things at the same time -- and the system only allows one task at a time.

      The system in place takes more time up just using it than it's worth.
    • Note that they do not use the word "telepresence". Government employers do not trust their FTEs; and often less their contractors - and at least 50% of the time this is rightfully so. I once worked on a government contract that required a significant amount of travel, and the HQ office was 80 miles from my home so I wasn't supposed to have to go in every day I was not on the road - but the contract required we be "within 10 minutes" of the Federal manager responsible for the program. I could've been with

  • This will be the end of civilization (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LowbrowDeluxe (889277) on Monday June 25 2007, @05:07PM (#19641817)
    Seriously, no one gets anything done in any job with their manager looking over their shoulder. Just think about it, every time the boss wanders into your office you stop what you're doing. And if you didn't, they'd start in with 'advice' until your productivity was shot to hell anyway. key-loggers and such are another great example. Any place I've ever been that used key-logging people spent more time trying to either get around it, or do the bare minimum WPM than they did in actual honest work. An invention that lets a boss micro-manage every employee on a second-by-second basis is going to bring our society grinding to a halt.
    • Seriously, no one gets anything done in any job with their manager looking over their shoulder.

      Ahh but this is different. They want to play on people's natural paranoia. You're right in that productivity drops when the boss is standing next to you. But what happens when the boss theoretically "could be looking at ANY TIME". When suddenly you hear that whatshisface got reprimanded/fired for goofing off 15 minutes after the "coffee break"?

      Of course all the damned pa
      • It's precisely that type of behavior that drove me to quit and start my own company. I couldn't sleep well at night with my financial wellbeing in the hands of someone else. Granted, being your own boss doesn't exactly pave the way to stacks of cash, but I didn't have to constantly worry about being fired anymore.

        Perhaps I just have a weak psyche, but I can't handle that type of treatment. My last boss wanted GPS tracking on me to know where I was at all times. That's insane, and around here that type o
        • At both Battelle Memorial Institute and Abbott Laboratories there are departments (groups/teams of about 30 or 40 people) where this is not only the norm but, indeed, the management in those departments will specifically direct certain employees into dead-end tasks for the express purpose of creating legitimate justification of slacking or nonproductivity

          Yep. GOT to have them drug patents, because research costs billions and billions of dollars and if we can't sell you your blood press
    • I'm a programmer. When the boss comes into my cube I stop what I'm doing so I can ask him what he wants. If he says "oh nothing, just seeing what you're up to" I say "I'm working, fuck off".

        • Management always tend to have strange ideas about how long it takes to do stuff.

          They want everything yesterday.

    • Number one on my list is an avatar that can autonomously handle the presence system.

    • Seriously, no one gets anything done in any job with their manager looking over their shoulder.
      This is the government. As often as not, no one gets anything done in their job without their manager looking over their shoulder. If this can actually get workers up off their behind and actually doing the work that my tax dollars paid them to do, I don't think I'll object too much.
  • Implant an RFID - obviously.

  • Micromanaging (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HomelessInLaJolla (1026842) * <lajollahomeless@hotmail.com> on Monday June 25 2007, @05:10PM (#19641879) Journal
    Is anyone at all skeptical of the profitable return, to the taxpayers, for the amount of money which will be spent on this type of micromanaging technology at the absurd level? The strain of micromonitoring employees will cause more harm and discord from people succumbing to the extra pressures without their usual outlets. Whether or not those outlets are on or off the clock, technically speaking, is irrelevent when considering that humans are not machines. Every human in every system, whether it be monks in a monastery, coders in a huge borg-like cube fortress, or workers on an assembly line, learns how and where they are able to sneak a few extra moments for themselves, by themselves, without the glaring eye of big brother breathing down their neck. Technologies like this tout performance gains and efficiency ratings which can only be expected of machines--not of humans--because humans inherently steal time for themselves.

    Given that the advertised technical merits of these expenditures in no way properly align with ten thousand years of knowledge of basic human and social psychology the only explanation for these programs is: pork barrel boondoggle.

    Stop wasting taxpayer money on high tech corporate welfare!!!

    • Stop wasting taxpayer money on high tech corporate welfare!!!
      Then stop voting for the people who introduce the corporate welfare.

       

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Colin Smith (2679)
          Well then. I guess the solution is to sit on your arse and do nothing but whine about the situation.

           
    • And then managers will find a way to 'get their numbers up' to show their boss that they are constantly improving productivity. Meanwhile, the whole system, from employees to high level managers, has turned into a scam of figuring out how to improve 'presence' while not actually doing any extra work to improve the measurement scores.

      Reminds me of how IBM used to measure employee productivity by numbers of lines programmed.
  • Connected? [slashdot.org] I'd like to think not...
  • afforded by this system ... might government employees approach productivity levels somewhat equivalent to their compensation finally?
      • sure the pay might not be great, but the benefits more than make up for it.

        My friend's dad works for the department of health or some such thing.. yeah he only makes like 35k, but he works mon-wed, half day thursday, gets 4 weeks of paid vacation/yr, and when his wife was diagnosed with cancer they gave him 3 months paid leave, and the insurance paid for 100% of the medical bills. He didn't pay a dime (more than 90k in med bills, under a traditional 80/20 plan that most private employers provide, he would
        • I do not know of any health plan where the maximum out-of-pocket is more than $5,000. $2,000 is far more common.


          Anyone with a plan that makes them pay more than $2,000 per year has the wrong plan. My employees have this sort of plan from United Health Care and it is less than $200 a month for a single person.

          Basically, I think you are just wrong about maximum out of pocket expenses.

  • more concerned about the implications here. This is called eating your own dog food. Once this is done, the feds will push to have this put in ALL phone systems.
  • Before everybody gets all worried about employee privacy (which I agree is a legitimate concern), consider the applications this would have for first responders, particularly in cases where more traditional networks and or critical infrastructure components may fail.

    Until a specific application is discussed, dismissing the technology as invasive seems premature.
    • Just because you can come up with one helpful use of a technology doesn't mean the technology isn't invasive. If a technology has the potential to be abused, it will be.
      • Can you tell me one thing that cannot be abused?
        • The answer to your question points directly to the fundamental importance of the 9th and 10th Amendments and, similarly, to the fundamental importance of a strict interpretation of those two amendments. As it is possible to abuse all manifestations of power over one's fellow men it is of significant interest to the freedom and liberty of all to limit the vesting of authority and power into the hands of politically affiliated figures to an extent that provides them with the ability to fulfill their duly app

  • This is a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2007, @05:18PM (#19642037)
    Lets start with congress.
  • ... to not work for the U.S. government.
  • for every little parts of there jobs and thinks like this will just end up having any time gained from this will lost to the paper work, overhead, and people doing the bare minimum. Works will just do the minimum amount of work not to get fired if they had a office with bosses like this.
  • The IRS now taxes cell phones [irs.gov] issued to you by your employer. If they tax cell phones, why not this? Dosen't your wife want to know where you are?
    • The IRS taxes a variety of benefits like that. It's another way to give you valuable things, just not Money. And as long as the IRS sees fit to tax money-based income, I don't see why they shouldn't be expected to tax Miscellaneous Other Benefits like cell phones.
  • They already have this. They are called a blackberry and personal pager and my personal cell phone.

    Why reinvent the wheel when we have cell phones with gps?

    And for the record, if the above three devices are unable to get a hold of me, I highly doubt another will help. If they want to go this route just issue everyone a blackberry with gps and require people carry it around all the time. Then when that doesn't work because half of the people forget to charge them or completely ignore them they can start on
  • Of course, Inner Party members like Dick Cheney will be exempt from this program.

    You know, so that they can get Frank and Candid Advice.

  • Ths is like the local taxi industry with gps (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sr180 (700526) on Monday June 25 2007, @06:39PM (#19643065) Journal
    They gps enabled all of the local taxi industry's fleet. All taxis are tracked at all times and jobs are handed out according to the position of the closest vehicle.

    So what do the cab drivers do? Stop in the most profitable area, and remove the gps antenna from the car. The system assumes the cab's gps signal is blocked by a building and further assumes that the car is in the same location. The cab driver then goes home, to the pub, where ever, and waits for the jobs that he wants to come up.

    To think that employees wont do similar things with this system is naive.

  • 'They want to be in contact with them at all times.'

    24/7 contact has been perfected since around 1997 -- with cell phones and pagers everyone is pretty much always in contact now unless they specifically choose not to be. So that purpose can't have anything to with the need for "presence technologies" and is most likely a red herring to mislead people from the true purpose of the technology. The surveillance aspect is separate from just contacting employees, and seems to be where the focus really is.

    What people don't know is that cell phones already have s [ft.com]

  • Wanting to keep tabs on every employee every minute is the mark of someone who does not trust his employees at all. The reason he doesn't trust them is because he's not trustworthy himself, knows it, and insecure in his position.

    Providing these misfits with technology that fulfills their wishes will lead to a long line of labor abuses. Not just now, but for years to come. Once the technology is in place, the maladjusted "boss" types will find it irresistable.

    What a horrible idea.

  • And now phones come with GPS built in, it would only take a little Java app, a website, and some AJAX [calum.org] to glue it all together.

  • ...is not aboard the Enterprise.
    • That used to work.

      Nowadays, most bosses simply fire back with, "So how much does unemployment pay?"

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