Maybe I’ll sound like a bitter old techie, but it’s absolutely wrong to have someone with no direct experience managing something that is technical.<p>If you can’t code, you shouldn’t manage coders. If you’re not a lawyer, don’t run a law firm. If you haven’t been in charge of a class of kids, you shouldn’t run a school. And that’s despite the day-to-day of these management roles not touching code/clients/kids.<p>The experience gained in a few years on any ladder is enough to appreciate most of how people in those fields think.<p>Have you ever tried working for someone who didn’t have relevant experience? You get people deciding that they don’t need an issue tracker, let alone a code repo. You get people who think paying Google 5 bucks a months is not worth it, they’d rather have their own email server. And it’s not that there’s never a case for having your own server, it’s that the case is never made in a technical way (eg we want security / uptime / whatever). The techies end up having to translate complex reasoning into something a layman could understand, or at least pretend to. A lot of time is wasted explaining things. And then when there’s feedback - and most people cannot resist the temptation to act like they’re contributing - it only makes sense to the non technical staff, while the tech people are trying to implement whatever crazy modification it is they’ve been given.<p>What these people tend to do is to make everything a management issue. So management, just like politics ends up having its own ladder. Relevant experience for being a health minister is to have been an MP. Relevant experience for managing a code department is having managed the interns.<p>It massively corrosive to let this continue.<p>And before someone makes this argument, it's perfectly possible for techies to do the managing and politics.
I see a lot of comments arguing "you don't need to be an expert in the field to be a minister".<p>That's pretty right, IMHO, but we're now talking about him not being an expert, we're talking about him not having the slightest clue.<p>Not knowing what a USB drive is for, is akin to a minister of defence not knowing what a bullet is for, or a minister of health not knowing what medication is (or what it's used for).<p>These are key, basic elements, and most mid-level education citizen will understand what they are. It's hard to understand how he can represent their best interest in that scope.
Appreciate this is to a pretty ridiculous degree, but isn't this pretty much the story across the board?<p>Anecdotally I heard about some of the conversations with the government and adult industry regarding the UK porn filter. It was something along the lines of:
Industry: "OK, we get you want to put a block in front of adult sites. But what about all the porn Twitter?"
Govt: "There's porn on Twitter?"<p>When we're all getting angry about encryption and privacy and backdoors (and whatever else), it's probably prudent to remember these are the kind of people we're dealing with.
> "Since I was 25 years old and independent I have instructed my staff and secretaries. I have never used a computer in my life,"<p>What golden cage was this man born in that he had a staff and secretaries at 25?
Its beneficial for people in leadership roles to have some experience in the grounded disciplines; But it is not mandatory.<p>Historically, there have been many kings and emperors who were <i>not</i> professional soldiers or strategists. Yet many of the states they headed were successful in warfare. Many of the kings or emperors were great soldiers, but not good governors; yet still the kingdoms were governed. A leader has one job, to lead. It includes taking advice from specialists and make a decision.<p>In representative democracy, the true job of a representative is to convey the decision making to the people they represent. This includes heeding to the advice of specialists who have been assigned to help the "people", through that representative. A representative in that case is just a messenger. A messenger does not need to understand the contents of the message.<p>The representative is from among the general populace and the general populace in plural is hardly specialist.<p>Edit(1): I understand that this situation is unforgivable. A minister of Cyber-Security must at least be used to the "Cyber" part. I actually commented because in Representative systems which I am used to, the specialty of Minister does not matter much. The minister is a part of the cabinet, which is just simple power sharing for rubber stamping the decision making process. The minister generally comes from the parliament. Its function is to legitimize a bureaucrat's decision, which the rep always does. It does not hamper the actual cyber security program (It also does not improve it at an accelerated rate, this just proves that cyber security is not a relative major priority for the current Japanese government, but that's beyond the point), which is run by specialized bureaucrats (most probably). Friendly Americans, the Minister does not hold much power, but just legitimatizes "people's agreement" to the actual officer in charge.<p>Edit(2): Please forgive my English! I am not a native speaker.
Par for the course unfortunately.<p>I remember the hearings after the problems with the Obamacare web site where the lady who ran Health and Human Services made it clear she was a believer in getting health care to people but seemed to think there was nothing she could do to make a software project succeed and that's completely untrue.<p>(Turns out the editor of my college newspaper was a project manager on that one... An astrophysics professor told me not to get involved in a 'science-in-politics' program that he did and look what happened to him...)
Ministers are all about government functions. As long as he has the right people below him and is able to listen to them and exercise judgment, that's what really counts.<p>What's weird though is "never" having used a computer. I mean, doesn't everyone write/edit with a computer these days? Do people at that level just verbally stream-of-consciousness dictate their memos and secretaries enter them? THAT is weird.
Someone sent me this link with the description "Japan's cyber-security minister doesn't use computers" and I thought it was some elaborate way to prevent being hackable... boy I didn't expect this.
The theatre of the Absurd has reached New Heights. If you don't understand something, you shouldn't be running the department that focuses on it. The legislature should have vetted his expertise before even proposing him as a candidate.
Sakurada blamed one particularly unimpressive performance in parliament on the opposition MP Renho Murata, complaining that she had not given him her questions in advance.<p>“Since there was no prior notice about the questions, I had no idea what would be asked at the session,” the Asahi quoted him as saying.<p>When Renho asked him how much funding the central government would contribute to the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics, he responded: “1,500 yen”, which works out at just over $13, some way below the actual sum of 150 billion yen.
At face value it seems ridiculous, but really, what benefits would it bring had he been a run of the mill e-mail and web user?<p>Assuming he's generally a competent person, he will now be forced to listen to and be informed by smart people in his department instead of putting his foot down and saying "I've used outlook all my life, so obviously I'm an expert. I've never been hacked, so policy is now that everyone should use Outlook."
It reminds me of the shadow home secretary falling for a Microsoft technical support scam.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/08/abbott_pc_support_scam_confession/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/08/abbott_pc_support_s...</a>
That's actually the most secure way to use a computer, so maybe he's on to something? ;-)<p>All joking aside, color me shocked a policy-maker has 0 experience with $thing they are writing policy for.
This is the end result of the 'old boy network', where the aged rise to the top on the basis of how many ticks they have groomed off the fur of the silverback's fur, in the USA/Japan, with no fur, it is the ass licks ledger that counts.
Sadly, this is fully operational in the USA military, where billions are spent on old weaponry whose life in a modern war will be measured in minutes when they meet modern drones. (by drones, I mean land based drone attack tanks etc, with costs only 5-10% of the cost of the manned equivalents, air based drones, surface water drones as well as submarine drones)
We see China and Russia unfettered by this old boy network that are allowing their brains unfettered freedom to make modern stuff.
This has happened before, when the blitzkrieg fought horse drawn gun carts at the start of WW2, when allied armies in Europe were prime examples of the old
boy network.<p>Why do we have it? We have a bribery and feedback mechanism in Congress that quantifies bribery and ass licking to perfection. An elected representative HAS NO SECRET BALLOT!!.
We can all see how he votes, as can all the bribers, who can call him to account.
We say this exists to allow the voters to see that there rep did their bidding YADA-YADA-YADA - we all know it allow the bribery effectiveness to be watched and measured, so you can threaten to cut them off if they do not dance to the briber's tune.
RANT/ How to get a better way? Empower all, with online voting of all eligible voters, in the style of the original Greek democracy. Pay people for their votes, hold back tax refunds for people who do not vote etc. This needs to be fine tuned.
Chance of success = zero, as all the well bribed elected officials do not want their gravy train to end. /RANT
My Algorithm professor in College had never used a Computer. He had a phd in Mathematics. Started off teaching Mathematics. When CS department was setup, he was invited to teach Maths in CS department. Then he switched to teaching subjects like Algorithms, Data Structures etc. He had never sat in-front of a Computer in life.
Ministers are figureheads; they take national policy and filter it down through their departments then report results back to the top.<p>Taking the UK as an example our health minister isn't a doctor and our education sec. isn't a professor. The executive branch of government acts no differently to any other large company.
clearly the head of cyber security should be someone who understands the risk of computers. and anyone who truly does would never use one, so perhaps it's a fit after all.
Sure for politics this is a bit different as the minister is probably more involved with budgeting and allocation of resources guided by his hopefully knowledgable advisors. It takes, however, special skill to be able to navigate through such deeply technical field as cybersecurity. While it's absurd to require him to be expert in the area, I would argue the ministry would benefit from him having a healthy curiosity towards technical innovation.<p>Otherwise it's my opinion as a technical person, that those knowledgeable in the cybersecurity matters will be frustrated by his inability to grasp even the basic concepts relating to the technical issues at hand. This will lead to poor morale and general apathy as technical ability is undervalued and instead political skill is preferred. Not a good mix for cybersecurity.
Let's equate this to sales for a second.<p>For success in sales, some would argue that salesmanship is vastly more important than nature of the salesman to the product.<p>iow, A great salesman is someone who can <i>sell ice to eskimos</i>.<p>Perhaps there is an equivalent argument to be made in management. A great manager is someone who can <i>manage anyone</i>.
I worked for a subsidiary of a very large telco.<p>The Director of IT had no idea what IPv6 was, had to get me to "configure" her home wifi router (i.e. turn it on), and on and on the list goes.<p>Plenty of people in high positions have no idea how to "do" anything more than run a meeting and summarize stuff for those above them.
Imho this man is a terrible choice for cyber-security minister.<p>Which has little to do with the fact that he has never used a computer, and everything to do with the fact that he decided that it was a smart idea to admit so publicly.
You don't have to be a mechanical engineer to lead a car company. However, you should at least know how to drive. This guy is basically saying he never drove a car.
I hope Japan is just playing with the Sun Tzu's idea: when far appear near.<p>They say he hadn't used a computer, but maybe he's a hacker instead.<p>On more serious note, I also support idea the person in charge has to have medium knowledge of all aspects of the subject he or she is appointed to lead, mixed with basic knowledge of overlapping subjects with the subject at hand, and finally hard earned high level leadership/people skills.
Obviously from the school of thought that amateurs (chaps who know chaps) know best just like Sir Bonar Neville-K<p><a href="https://twitter.com/sirbonar" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/sirbonar</a><p>And of course the star of SIS Kim<p>This is a parody account "I hope"
So how can I become a minister or manager? If it doesn't take domain knowledge, then what roadmap / path / strategy do I need to become one?<p>It's a real question I have on my mind after reading this.
Came here hoping this was some five-dimensional chess / wallfacer situation where he had airgapped himself in order to be the perfect incorruptible security officer. Alas, nope.
It's astonishing that there exists <i>any</i> grown person working in a white collar career that has never used a computer. That could be a headline on its own.
Why does the "he can't get hacked without a computer" keep coming up all over this discussion?<p>You're not a failure as a health minister if you get cancer.
Off Topic but does that mean he doesn't consume pornography at all?<p>Do they still even sell magazines/DVD's and stuff like that in Japan?
Took a move out of Equifax's playbook I see: <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/equifax-ceo-hired-a-music-major-as-the-companys-chief-security-officer-2017-09-15" rel="nofollow">https://www.marketwatch.com/story/equifax-ceo-hired-a-music-...</a>
People like him blow my mind. How do you make others believe that you are a great leader, a mastermind at things you do when in reality you don't know a thing.
"Jim Hacker: We got to give him something, I promised.<p>Sir Humphrey: Well, what is he interested in? Does he watch television?<p>Jim Hacker: He hasn't even got a set.<p>Sir Humphrey: Fine, make him a Governor of the BBC."<p>-- Yes, Prime Minister