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We often discuss the merit (or necessity) of having a formal degree in technology. This story is another installment in that debate:
The Department of the Interior's computer systems played a major role in the breach of systems belonging to the Office of Personnel Management, and DOI officials were called before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday to answer questions about the over 3,000 vulnerabilities in agency systems discovered in a penetration test run by Interior's Inspector General office. But there was one unexpected revelation during the hearing: a key Interior technology official who had access to sensitive systems for over five years had lied about his education, submitting falsified college transcripts produced by an online service.
The official, Faisal Ahmed, was assistant director of the Interior's Office of Law Enforcement and Security from 2007 to 2013, heading its Technology division. He claimed to have a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a master's degree in technology management from the University of Central Florida—but he never attended either of those schools. He resigned from his position at Interior when the fraudulent claim was exposed by a representative of the University of Central Florida's alumni association, who discovered he had never attended the school after Ahmed accepted and then suddenly deleted a connection with her on LinkedIn.
TFA emphasizes the falsification he did of his credentials, but there seems to be heavy insinuation that lack of degree = lack of ability.
Official Submission
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 17 2015, @08:50PM
In my experience, having a degree is not a sign of increased competence in IT. That said, it is an indication of the ability to do a lot of silly things for no benefit other than approval of the authorities. It also tends to indicate a certain amount of wealth, and membership in certain social groups.
OTOH, if you go to a *GOOD* college, you will at least be exposed to, and temporarily learn, many important things that it's easy to skip over. Perhaps some of the now have decent classes on systems administration, but I'm not at all sure that I'd bet that way.
FWIW, I have taken a high school drop out who was motivated and somewhat skilled in math...he was an astrologer, and actually calculated the charts...and taught him to be a competent professional programmer. Admittedly this was decades ago, but he retired from a successful career. When I was learning practically nobody had degrees in computer science and the term IT hadn't been invented. I found the college courses I took to be a sound basis...enough that I could learn from Knuth's books. But I've always been a somewhat academic person (though not a good student at college). The astrologer was much more practically oriented, and soon switched into a management track, and retired as a department head of a small company, where I retired as a professional programmer.
All that said, do note that he was motivated. His original motivation was to increase the accuracy with which he calculated his charts. As a programmer he also wanted to do a good job. And as a manager. This was, I think, the most important factor. Another was that he was quite intelligent. I doubt that he ever became as skilled a programmer as I did, but he did become well above average. (And I may be biased in favor of myself.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.