[Nodxa] ARRL IT: It’s far worse than they told us!

[Tedd Mirgliotta (KB8NW)]

The following was posted on CADXA Groups.io and other Web sources. I
had to edit this post to be able to post it on the NODXA Reflector:

Here’s a copy of a post by AA6YQ, developer of DXLab, on Facebook’s
My ARRL Voice group.

My ARRL Voice (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1181497555327577)

Dave Bernstein 
(https://www.facebook.com/groups/1181497555327577/user/669779391)

ARRL IT: It’s far worse than they told us!

On 2024-09-19, ARRL Southeast Division Director Mickey Baker N4MB met
via Zoom with the Southeast DX Club. A recording of the meeting is
available here:    https://sedxc.org/sedxc/zoom/zoom_09.19.2024.mp4

Mickey’s presentation (delivered without slides) begins at 11:20.

Here are the points relevant to the “System Disruption”

1. Backups were destroyed; either the previous IT Director’s effort to
    shift backups to inexpensive write-mostly storage on Amazon Web Services
    failed, or the ransomware perpetrators found these online backups and
    deleted them.

2. The new IT Director hired after the incident installed a new “backup
    appliance,” but reported it to be working without ever having tested
    its recovery functionality or performance.

3. Decryption keys provided by the ransomware perpetrators did not decrypt
    the ARRL’s finance system; ARRL staff are still trying to recover the
    database from this system. All accounting is currently manual. This is
    why the 2023 Annual Report has not yet been published.

4. Recovering LoTW was accomplished by hiring John Bloom – the original
    developer who released LoTW in 2003 with no testing and no user doc-
    umentation. LoTW is running on versions of Centos (Linux) and SAP
    MaxDB – both of which have been unsupported for more than 5 years.
    (Duh: guess what happens when you starve LoTW of development and
    maintenance resources for the past 7 years).

5. An IT Advisory Committee was created and is chaired by Kristen McIntyre,
    K6WX - an Apple Developer with no IT Operations experience. She
    advocates recreating the ARRL’s IT environment from scratch. This
    committee’s first 3 meeting have made no progress.

6. Since early July, Jon Bloom has been working alone to re-implement the
    DXCC System in Python. The system previously ran on Windows 98 and
    FoxPro. FoxPro won’t run on any operating system after Windows 98,
    and the ARRL did not retain the ability to create a Windows 98 system.

7. There is no documentation of which ARRL applications and services are
    running on which hardware.

8. Everything is running in 3 rooms on the second floor of ARRL Head-
    quarters, with Servers and Storage in different rooms. It’s been
    that way for ~20 years.

9. The ARRL is still spending ~$40K a month on recovery efforts (Finance
    system, DXCC system)

10. Mickey is unhappy with the approach to recovery. His offer to serve
     as Project Leader at no charge has not been accepted.

Bluntly, this situation is ridiculous. The complete absence of IT com-
petence from the CEO on down is outrageous.

CEO Minster’s 2021 proposal to re-implement LoTW from scratch – his
infamous “Project X” - was cancelled in 2023 as unaffordable before it
ever got off the ground. Now Ms. McIntyre wants to re-implement the
entire IT infrastructure from scratch? The ARRL badly needs leadership
with experience in modern software engineering and iterative development.

Don’t like it? Engage with your ARRL Director! Contact information is
here:                http://www.arrl.org/divisions

de AA6YQ

Jim N7US

-- 
Tedd Mirgliotta, KB8NW - E-mail addresses:
<kb8nw at hotmail.com>  and<kb8nw at arrl.net>
Editor of the Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin (OPDX - DXer's Tool of Excellence)
President of the "Northern Ohio DX Association" (NODXA)
DX Advisor for the "Northern Ohio Amateur Radio Society
Past ARRL Assistant Director of the Great Lakes Division (1996-2022)
Sysop of the "Basic Amateur Radio Frequency BBS" (BARF80.ORG)