Insights · Looking Back
Operations & Workforce
The Looking Back articles seen through operations & workforce, across every sector, in order.
45 articles
February 2020
Week of 3 February 2020
Iowa’s caucus app failed at rollout before it failed in code
The Iowa Democratic caucus app had a coding error, but the public failure came from hard installation, untrained users and a fallback phone line nobody had sized. Every agency launch carries the same three operational risks.
Week of 24 February 2020
Buildings intact, workforce gone: the scenario continuity plans skipped
As markets fell and federal health officials warned of community spread, most continuity plans still assumed the loss of a building. A pandemic removes people, suppliers and remote capacity at once, and plans had to be rebuilt and tested around those three losses.
April 2020
July 2020
September 2020
October 2020
November 2020
February 2021
May 2021
June 2021
August 2021
September 2021
November 2021
Week of 1 November 2021
Patch what attackers use: BOD 22-01 and the agency work queue
CISA’s Binding Operational Directive 22-01 replaced severity scores with a short, evidence-based list and a federal deadline. Its biggest effect was on how agency patch teams spent their week, argued with system owners, and exposed weak asset inventories.
Week of 22 November 2021
Omicron’s scarcest resource was staff, and few hospitals could count them in real time
When WHO named Omicron a variant of concern in late November 2021, hospitals braced for patients. The binding constraint that winter was staff able to work, and the speed of every decision depended on joining data scattered across HR, scheduling and occupational health.
December 2021
February 2022
March 2022
May 2022
Week of 16 May 2022
Safe harbor for researchers, homework for system owners
The Justice Department’s pledge not to charge good-faith security research made outside reports more likely. For agencies, the work it created was operational: a front door for reports, a route to whoever can fix the flaw, and a way to close the loop.
Week of 30 May 2022
No patch yet: Follina and Confluence tested who may switch things off
Two flaws exploited before fixes existed left health systems with workarounds only. The deciding factor was organizational: who could authorize turning something off, who could carry it out across the edges of the estate, and who confirmed it worked.