Tag: work

I’ve implemented web access policies as well as been subject to them. But I have never encountered something as stupid as the web access policy enforcement at my current workplace. They’re using a commercial package called Websense. But it’s nonsense if you ask me. It is expensive and, to put it plainly, it sucks. It seems they’re using a vendor-managed blacklist so it blocks a whole bunch websites regardless of actual content, a lot of which are actually useful for work. And allows some websites that should have been blocked. So it doesn’t really do what it’s supposed to do. Instead it just irritates and even infuriates users. If it were up to me, I would have been a well-defined blacklist of really undesirable websites and content. Or, if no research work is involved, using a whitelist of allowed websites. But, unfortunately, it’s not so I’ll just rant about it.

I arrived at work after the long weekend to find new seatmates. I SMSed Mark, who’s supposed to by my neighbor to the right to ask if he has been informed of a new desk assignment. He wasn’t and it was only when he arrived that we found out that a team from another room has been relocated to our area and he has been moved to my left. Something like that has happened to me, too. I arrived one day after being on leave to find someone else sitting on my desk. And not even an email as to what happened. I ended up waiting at the reception for someone who knows where I was supposed to sit. How’s that for uncoordinated?

So the company suddenly decided to ask me for an NBI clearance. No sweat, right? NOT! The way things work is that you apply for a clearance, they get your personal details, fingerprint you, then run you through their database, and if your name matches a known person with a “derogatory record” you get a “hit” and getting a clearance is suddenly so much less straightforward.

Wait a minute, name match? Yup, you got that right! If your name say matches that of a known criminal, then your clearance gets delayed from quite some time as they check you further. This can vary from a few days to a month or two. You can just imagine the grief of people with pretty common names.

But why name? Don’t they have a more unique way of identifying people? Like maybe fingerprints?!? I mean that’s why they fingerprint you, right? If there’s a name match, you would think the next thing they’d do is compare fingerprints, right? But apparently that’s still not the case because why would they already call a “hit” on just a name match? Why do they still bother interviewing you and having you  sign a written and notarized denial?

Fifteen(!) years ago, I worked with DOST and NBI at preliminary efforts towards an automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS). Guess nothing has changed since. Sadness.

It’s my first month with a new company. Although there are vast differences, e.g. the previous company is a BPO while the new one is a consulting company, there are also certain parallels. I guess companies really are in essence very similar, they just vary in scale and scope.

For example, on the IT side, there’s only a handful of support people serving so many. The end result is similar: one week service record turnover, monitors lining the hallway, etc. People are also people bitching about access control. Now I know how it feels. But that’s another story. Hahaha.

On the Software Development side, the new company is so much better. They have a strong project management discipline going as well as a consistent development life cycle. But, although there’s a long way to go, there are similarities. Were focusing on Java, frameworks like Spring and Hibernate, we’re moving towards an iterative software development cycle, etc. It’s definitely a good thing to know that we were on the right track.