Would you like fries with that college degree?

Government employees that work in classified environments are warned (and monitored) about their online presence. Even though they may personally have social media accounts, they are NOT permitted to utilize them for work, or even let their affiliation be known. That being said, the younger employees are coming to work with years-old social media accounts that they may keep alive, but many choose not to. There has always been a risk associated with connecting a business, school, medical facility or SCADA system online. However, computer hackers of today don’t need to be as smart as they used to… 20 years ago, you needed to know how to code in order to infiltrate a secured system (such as a bank – we will leave the govt. out of this for now). Nowadays, the really tech-savvy hackers have written codes and embedded them in tools that they sell on the Internet to anyone who has the money. This allows the computer hacker of today to easily infiltrate a system with the click of a few buttons. I have always said that computer admins need to be diligent 100% of the time, and hackers only need to be lucky, once. This makes these systems mentioned above extremely vulnerable. Note to everyone reading…. PATCH YOUR SYTEMS WEEKLY. (off the soapbox). Of course the Dept of Defense hires people directly for their digital literacies… mostly. It is important to understand that the Government, and specifically the Dept of Defense, hire for almost any and every type of job you can imagine. Not all require soft skills, not all require digital literacy. At last check, there were over 200 jobs available for hire. Some of them include: lawyer, political advisor, legislative consultant, intelligence analyst, bus driver, electrical engineer, sanitation worker, cafeteria worker, digital network analyst… what I’m trying to say is that there is no way to make a blanket statement on government hiring as each position requires different skills. All of this to say that I agree with John Maloney (2013, Nov) https://jarche.com/2013/11/networks-are-the-new-companies/ who said, “Technically and sociologically there is nothing new. All human organization, including business, always was and always will-be networks. What is new is the old network patterns, centralize, Fordist, authoritarian, are failing. New network patterns are emerging”. All this has really done is make things quicker to access, quicker doesn’t always mean better. After the 9/11 commission report, the Intelligence Community (IC) was told that they needed to find ways to better communicate and collaborate on similar targets so that they could better “connect the dots”. I will say that the means to do this have changed drastically for the better, but the majority of people won’t utilize them. I don’t know why, everyone has a different answer, but as I’ve said many times… it always about money. IC agencies make their money off of the volume of intelligence that they collect and report. No one wants someone else to take the glory, or the money from the budget that justifies their position each year. Networking, whether through digital means, or interpersonal, is the key to knowlege amd collaboration. Kim Parker talked about the role of education and skills learned while on the job. the government requires a 4 year degree, mostly. As I said earlier, there's no way to make a blanket statement regarding education requirements, as each position has different skills and education necessary. The military that are assigned and return as civillians bring another aspect to the workforce. While a college degree is usually required, years of experience is also permitted for military only. The future will be interesting to watch play out as many more younger people are obtaining college degrees than ever before. Will it be a smart investment? Or will we have higher educated people asking, "would you like fries with that?"