Sign in / up

back to article MI5 recruiters enter the Strategy Boutique in CIO search

Free Whitepaper - Re-engineering an Open Conversation Framework MI5 aims to recruit a senior business executive to head up big changes to its IT operation, ahead of an anticipated squeeze on the intelligence budget. A six-figure salary is on offer for the Security Service's "head of transformation and office of CIO". All the …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    How the SS really do lobbying...

    "...This week The Sun cited "senior security sources" warning that cuts would make an attack on the Olympics more likely....."

    Cuts in the SS and SIS budgets would have **ck-all effect on Olympic Security. If anything, SS involvement would be more likely to inflame British Muslims and encourage amateur attacks. That's what's happened so far.

    However, there is a way the SS could ensure their jobs are safe for a bit longer (after all the other WW2 countries have long since shrunk their spook services). They could brief up another war, like they did with Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Korea again, anyone? We haven't had a war there since the 1950s, and it must be essential to safeguard our supplies of Lucky Goldstar white goods.....

    1 3
  2. Paul 4

    Just make sure

    The joss-sticks arn't the exploding one's or Q will go mental.

    0 0
  3. Ian Michael Gumby
    Thumb Up

    No shock here...

    The key is being able to do more with less.

    The problem with any Bureaucratic Organization is that there is a 'use it or lose it' mentality.

    So you want to keep bloated over priced systems in play.

    The reality is that you can do a lot more with fewer highly trained, highly compensated, smarter people than hiring many lower grade people. (One of the increasing costs is in staffing.) Looking to cutting edge technology changes and redesigning existing bloated systems is one way to reduce costs over the long haul. Short term costs rise because you can't just shut off the old system while you're building the new system.

    So you need a CIO who can calm the politicos and bureaucrats while leading his CTO and team.

    Unfortunately there are too many posers who claim to have this skill...

    Thumbs up because at least they are facing the reality of tighter budgets, and are actively looking for a solution.

    1 0
    1. I didn't do IT.
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      Re: fewer... people? Business != Intelligence

      The problem is, as long as they espouse running any government agency like a "business", they will fail.

      Businesses don't want "highly trained, highly compensated, smarter people", they want low paid cogs that will advance our base of knowledge in an trickle amount that can be easily absorbed by the system. You have only to look at your government's performance the past few decades (the civil servant jobsworths - never mind any elected official) to see this in "action".

      Military entities and agencies that support military operations (intelligence is one of them) should not - CAN NOT - run this way effectively. Military management != Business management.

      <rant> The Intelligence field is changing; both what we consider valid intel and where it can be found. Luckily, however, eventually it all comes down to people. Cutting out experienced analysts that know how other people in different cultures, societies, and cults think is a step backwards. Either cut existing IT ranks to get the intelligent IT people that I AGREE are needed, or train the existing ones up to where they need to be. If they can't be, it shouldn't matter who their contractor is/was or who they are related to or know - better to have a nephew out and looking for another job than to have servicemen/women killed due to incompetence. Or because some penny-pinching upper management with a six figure salary didn't keep or clean out the right resources. </rant>

      0 0
      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        <rant>Hear, here</rant>

        That was an Intelligent Intelligence rant, I didn't do IT. And the first half of the post also hit the nail squarely on the head.

        And whenever those two parts are indeed the truth of the matter, is current official global and British Intelligence, not fit for Future Brave New World Purpose, and most definitely not for Lead Driver Input into any New World Order Regime clone of a Planetary Administration.

        And I was going to say, "They do say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks", by way of a totally inadequate apology and pathetic excuse for dismal puppet performance, but felt that it was just too Clarksonian and brutally apt, so instead it is best shouted ...."THEY DO SAY THAT YOU CAN'T TEACH AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS. WHERE ARE THE NEW PEDIGREE PUPPIES?"

        Of course, whenever anything is so geared to preserving itself rather than growing into a newer version of an expanded model, is it normally just replaced and sidelined and given a revitalising subsidiary support role to a much more Lively and even HypermanIQ Operation of ZerodDay Pirate Programs and ZigZagging Private Projects in Service of the Greater Public Good with Pretty Good Privacy ProVision.

        0 0
  4. moonface
    Grenade

    Small SS budgetary solution.

    Find the Sun's senior security sources mole and then sack them!.

    1 0
  5. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Grenade

    A Job, Ideal for Mr H.A.S. Bean

    Seems like a desperate deckchairs rearrangement on the Titanic sort of enterprise.

    And will someone give GCHQ and the Office of Cyber Security a kick up the ass to see if there is any life in that particular and peculiar apology of a service.

    And who is going to work at such desks for a pathetic six figure sum, whenever competent pilots can make billions working their magic baiting hooks and honey traps for spooks worldwide and rendering existing traditional security wannabes, dinosaurs in the new Great Game plays.

    There is though, at least one government servant who knows where the future lies, and of the dangers which lurk there ...... http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/the-dangers-of-turning-spies-into-generals-and-vice-versa/

    And the video of his speech, which is hyperlinked in the above Wired article, is very educational.

    The UK Cyber Command clone would appear to be so laid back and low key as to be practically invisible , which would be admirable were it not for the fact that it be more likely to be a still born abortion of a failed operation, yet to be born and launched.

    1 1
  6. Etrien Dautre
    Joke

    Remember me on this computer?

    "And will someone give GCHQ and the Office of Cyber Security a kick up the ass to see if there is any life in that..." -

    Easy. Sell B[P, buy on Red Light announcement daily bottom, watch next 8:30. Another pit credit may be opened after a short rise.

    Now watch GCHQ main entrance and car spot, great if you have any steady above. If this post is trustworthy due to the situation, you will see a rise in outcoming human traffic during the next hour.

    Err... If no traffic, buy BP. Nothing can shake the Tower.

    0 0
  7. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    FAIL

    Stuff and Nonsense? I don't think so. It's just too bloody true, to be quietly ignored.

    "Because it was originally illegal for GCHQ to spy on its own UK citizens, this problem was easily circumvented by having the US owned Menwith Hill do the dirty work for them. Because of this US control, British MPs trying to ask questions in Parliament about the base just came up against a brick wall. With the introduction of recent far-reaching Acts of Parliament, handing more powers to both GCHQ and MI5, virtually anything goes!" ...... http://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret4.htm#echelon

    So is that who is responsible for the lack of Global Intelligence and Progress and Intelligent Global Progress. Sadly and rather maddingly, is it more a case of nothing is really working rather than virtual anything goes under present executive administrative models. And best that British MPs and their ilk are left out of those loops as they'll only imagine and delude themselves that they are able or even entitled to add input that leads, rather than doing what they are elected to do, which is server the people's pleasure rather than making a pig's ear of things with criminal helpings to server their own pleasures.

    All in all, it's a pretty pathetic show which they can all be thoroughly ashamed of being responsible for.

    0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.