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Who's Nice, Who's Not

President-Elect Barack Obama and his team won the election with good campaign leadership, a calm temperament, intelligence, savvy, perseverance, some luck, and lots of other things. Obama is quickly moving to assemble his teams. Such decisions will of course elicit approval from some, condemnation from others. Obama picked his Chief of Staff this week, Rahm Emanuel, a man with a fearsome reputation. Everyone has an opinion, with some claiming that the Rahm pick indicates a partisan direction for Obama's governance style.

For the rest of the top positions each media publication seems to have its own list of "probable picks". FoxNews writes it's list under the happy title: "Obama, Leaning on Clintonian Dems, Might Tap Republicans". The Nation encourages Obama to depend on Robert Reich and David Bonior more than the many "investment-banker, free-trader" types who dominate the stages.

The lists from disparate political camps overlap, but can be improbably different from each other. They're perhaps "predictive", by certainly sometimes no more than "wishful thinking". It seems that the more the individual has been in the news, the bolder the media opinions about the suitability of their role and the quicker the lines are drawn.

For instance Larry Summers' name arose as possible Treasury Secretary. The Financial Times, favors Larry Summers, who has been a columnist for the paper since he resigned the Harvard presidency. Summers got himself in trouble at Harvard most famously by stating at a woman's conference that women's abilities in science and math might be limited by genetics or personal preferences.

His opinion elicited furor from men and women alike, especially scientists who knew better. For all the disputation, however, if there was any time in the past couple of decades when such regressive ideas might gain public traction, 2005 seemed like a ripe time. There were plenty of people who jumped at the opportunity to riff off Summer's comments under the guise of "what's wrong with asking for more research on the issue?" Perhaps arguing for Dr. Summers, or appropriating his views for an ascendant ideology, one Financial Times columnist wrote:

"The trouble is not that Mr Summers is too self-satisfied. It is that Harvard is. Harvard - and US universities like it - tend to promulgate a set of views - global warming is a crisis; the US is to blame for the world's troubles; governments of developed nations ought to be large; and quotas or some form of affirmative action is required when it comes to the advancement of women and minorities. These same universities often shut out, or look away from, arguments that do not support these beliefs. The result is not "neo-Stalinist" monoliths - novelist Michael Crichton's description of universities in his current bestseller, State of Fear. But it is universities that are boring, provincial, shut in.

Mr Summers was trying to kick open doors - to recapture for Harvard the sense of intellectual possibility that leads to progress. The "woman" controversy is a good example. The fact that more maths prodigies are boys is not even hypothetical; the data have been out there for decades. When tested in hard sciences girls tend to clump in the middle of the statistical range. Boys, by contrast, are more spread out - hitting stellar highs and humiliating lows more frequently.

If, after decades of promoting girls, boys still do better, it is not crazy to wonder whether the difference is hardwired....(Shalaes, A. FT, 01/2005)"

The columnist's assertions about math and science skills, as well as Summer's, are dead wrong. We all know this, these opinions have been disproved by many a study. Summers' apologized profusely and explained he didn't mean it as it was taken. He stepped aside as Harvard's president, but continues to work in positions of prestige and influence.

This one episode in Summers' long career may or may not influence whether Obama chooses him, however it's fresh in people's minds. The National Organization for Women, (NOW), decried the idea of Summers for Treasury Secretary, citing his gaffes about gender as well as his leadership on some deregulatory points that contributed to the current financial market strife.¹Time lists more Summer's misteps (such as the Summer's memo) of Summers past, then balances the list of cons by noting his intelligence. Each source draws their own conclusion about his suitability. Some students support his possible nomination, writing odes to him based on their favorable experiences as female students.

Pick Me! Pick Me!

There's also a general shuffling around in congress, with key players circling key leadership roles. Of great interest to many of people, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), is vying to replace Congressman John Dingell's (D-MI) on the Energy and Commerce Chairman. Waxman has been a bulldog on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Dingell's powerful position on Energy and Commerce has long checked the Democrat party's efforts on emissions. Dingell is a vigilant protector of the American auto industry status quo who fought against CAFE standard updates, and against California's attempts to pass a bill to allow states to pass their own global warming legislation. In "Congress on CAFE: Detroit misled us", we mention Dingell's history of successes.

Some of Dingell's other work on the committee is fighting against bisphenol A (BPA). As we've mentioned, the congressman burnishes his credentials by balancing his anti-environment stances on emissions. In a letter to his committee members asking for support he wrote that his current objectives were working healthcare reform, global warming, and overhauling the FDA.

There's not too many people who think Dingell's work on global-warming has been noteworthy. A couple of weeks ago EnergyWashington Week reported that the Ways and Means Committee introduced its own cap-and-trade legislation and is attempting to circumvent Dingell's more lax Energy & Commerce Committee cap-and-trade legislation.

YAY!

It's a new day.

"...His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world..." (NYT)¹

Yes, there's work to do. Yes, it will be difficult. But today we recognize how much America's just accomplished.

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¹Obama won despite warnings about possible GOP ballot fraud stemming from information dribbling out of the Ohio trial concerning 2004 Ohio ballot fraud. In the latest episode, Michael Connell, a consultant whose firm has been accused of computer manipulation, denied knowing anything about GOP rigging the 2004 Ohio election results. Connell works for Randy Cole. Cole owns 15 companies that work simultaneously on GOP election campaigns (Bush/Cheney 2000/2004, McCain 2008, many others), anti-Abortion groups and churches, GOP mass mailings, government contracts, etc. Stephen Spoonamore, a key witness in the trial brings the allegations, explains in a multi-part series starting here.

Book Search, More, Better

Google recently reached a settlement with the Author's Guild and the Association of American Publishers, which will pave the way for digitization of copyrighted books for on-line use. The authors and publishers brought suits against Google in 2005, accusing the company of copyright infringement. Google wanted to digitize books for internet perusal, but the publishers had their own opinion of that: "They keep talking about doing this because it is going to be good for the world. That has never been a principle in law. They 'do no evil' except they are stealing people's property."

Google paid $125 million to settle the suit, which will cover legal fees and fund the Book Rights Registry, to be modeled after the music industry's copyright clearing house ASCAP. Google will structure a deal to put thousands of digitized books on the web. Readers will be able to access books or buy a digitized copy and publishers and authors will get some percentage of the customer fees.

Newspapers Stop Printing

Print is steadily moving on-line. The Christian Science Monitor announced yesterday that it will soon (just about) cease printing:

"in April 2009 the daily print edition of The Christian Science Monitor will shift to a 24/7 daily Web publication. This will be combined with the launch of an attractive new weekly print publication that looks behind the headlines..."

The continued cuts to newspapers is not always seen as a good thing. Some papers aren't ready to give up their print editions (with much more lucrative advertising than on-line). Instead they cut staff. Noted one commenter:

New Jersey, a petri dish of corruption, will have to make do with 40 percent fewer reporters at The Star-Ledger, one of the few remaining cops on the beat. The Los Angeles Times, which toils under Hollywood's nose, has one movie reviewer left on staff.

As everyone knows, this won't be too good for many blogs and on-line media outlets either.

And Textbooks?

The textbook publishing industry should be next to change models and offer more open content. Congress recently passed a law that helps keep textbook prices transparent to students, professors and colleges. Six states have similar laws.

In the past couple of years the textbook and learning divisions of several publishing companies have changed hands, including Houghton Mifflin in the US to Riverdeep, Thomson Learning, Worters Kewer's educational arm, and Reed Elsevier's Harcourt Education. The companies weren't adept at changing their business strategy to meet the increasingly web savvy customer base, and alternative on-line options were increasing. Although five textbook publishers have now launched CourseSmart to offer online textbooks cheaper, it's not clear that this is a burgeoning enterprise.

In addition to the "traditional" textbook model, the Christian Science Monitor mentioned in a recent article a couple of "radical" textbook alternatives. One, Connexions (cnx.org), is a project of Rice University. Connexions offers Creative Commons licensed learning tools that are "non-linear modules" authored by independent authors and hosted on their site. The Connexions philosophy is based on their contention that the traditional textbook "system is broken." California State University has a site called Merlot, which I can't say I understand after spending, well, not very much time browsing through. There's also Wikibooks, and of course many professors simply write their own books from lecture notes.

Microhoo, Forward to the Future

Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer Ray Ozzie talked at a Las Vegas technology conference recently about the company's plans to build a "seamless mesh" computing infrastructure, inclusive of online applications and mobile devices. Microsoft is of course looking to extend its reach and in keeping with this goal aggressively proposes to merge with Yahoo. In public relations efforts focused on its Yahoo offer the company spins out comforting nuggets of merger wisdom. Ozzie told the Financial Times Monday: "'Technology companies, if they dive in and just smash things together for smashing them together's sake, it's reckless, it's just simply reckless.'" ("Microsoft in No Rush to Merge Yahoo Technology.") The message for investors, employers and customers is that Microsoft understands the risks of large mergers.

Meanwhile, as Mr. Ozzie spews sage adages about the heedless smashing together of things, Microsoft contends with product fallout from its latest operating system. In "They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know", the New York Times describes Vista's incompatibility problems and quotes three top executives who make disparaging on-the-record remarks. Granted they don't sling zingers worthy of Democratic presidential campaign staff, but one Microsoft executive who bought a "Vista Capable" PC, then thrashed through reckoning with its limited functionality told the Times: "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine."

According to the story, many users refuse to upgrade and instead run XP because of Vista's reputation for various issues like: "[t]he graphics chip that couldn't handle Vista's whizzy special effects. The long delays as it loaded. The applications that ran at slower speeds. The printers, scanners and other hardware peripherals, which work dandily with XP, that lacked the necessary software, the drivers, to work well with Vista." All these problems after multiple launch delays. Is Vista a "smashed together" product?

Trash From The Past

If Vista had been launched at another time in history, like after any one of its proceeding operating systems -- MS-DOS, Windows 1.0, 2.0, 286, 386, 3.0, or Windows for Workgroups 3.1 or 3.11, for instance, these users might be duly appreciative. Today's new operating systems are comparatively customer friendly. Mind you today's customers have every right to complain heartily -- but lets get some perspective from the systems of yore.

Once operating systems didn't come bundled on PCs and setting them up took hours. This was often a collaborative group effort, as individuals all over the world, through trials and tribulation, would acquire tricks for easing the process then share their expertise on websites or via newgroups. Here's how one set of instructions for installing Windows for Workgroups 3.11, circa 1995, touted the new operating system from the Redmond company: "WFWG 3.11 is a real product with a real manual and Microsoft support. If there is a problem installing it, then there are many other sources of information available for troubleshooting the problem." Hard to overemphasize the importance of other sources back then.

If you weren't blessed with a CD-Rom, you'd do the installation by floppy, and so for Windows for Workgroups you'd get your pile of installation floppy discs and settle down at your computer for some fun. Four steps in, the guide offered some advice on the part, "add network protocol"

"With a bit of luck, the TCP/IP-32 protocol will be in the list. If not, then it is an "Unlisted or Updated Protocol" which is the first choice. Unfortunately, even if the TCP/IP protocol is listed, WFWG generally doesn't really know where to find it. It may invent a plausible but incorrect directory...No matter what choice is made, be prepared to fill in a dialog box with the letter and directory where the Microsoft TCP/IP distribution directory is found. Once the files are located, WFWG will copy them into the WFWG system and will add the protocol to the list in the Network Drivers and Network Setup panels. Back out by clicking the various OK buttons."

That's how it went, not mind-boggling, but tedious. If the installation was successful it was a great moment, but you'd keep that pile of floppies close at hand because who knew? If soon after you tried to install some software in an order that the operating system found offensive or if the computer for no apparent reason ceased to function in a predictable way, often your only recourse was to "reinstall". Vista is a system with today's problems, as all Microsoft operating systems have had age appropriate glitches for perpetual cutting edge user demanded technologies.

Crash To the Past

Vista problems were accompanied by a less than straight-forward marketing scheme with confusing (some say deceptive) advertising. In order to market Vista to lower end computers, the NYT says, Microsoft changed the label on new PC's. from the definitive "Vista Ready", which it wasn't, to the more wishy-washy "Vista Capable", a dubious distinction that many customers assumed meant "able", but actually meant "unable", and "incapable" of running any version of Vista except the scaled down one called "Home Basic", missing many of Vista's advertised features. There's the catch.

The judge in the lawsuit against Microsoft granted the case class-action status, so the plaintiffs who bought a PC labeled "Windows Vista Capable" could seek compensation for the company's deceptive marketing aimed at increasing demand. Microsoft appealed the class-action status, saying since customers had "different information" they weren't all in the same class, and because, "[c]ontinued proceedings here would cost Microsoft a substantial sum of money for discovery and divert key personnel from full-time tasks." But doesn't Microsoft systematically buck for court proceedings in lieu of nicer, profit-curtailing behavior? What better use of key personnel then?

They DOS Protest Too Much

Sure, some key personnel -- top executives -- spend time complaining to the New York Times about Vista. The paper quoted Microsoft VP Mike Nash saying "I personally got burned", which is interesting because VP's usually don't get "burned" on operating systems they (buy?) at steep employee discounts, especially when they have a stake in the company's rising stock. But still, when your executives go on the record with such admissions it can't be good -- or can it? Since key personnel are unlikely to join the class action suit, maybe their playing the we're all in it together card?

Some key personnel also make soothing sounds about the future and Microhoo, and some more stay busy shaking off the past and a chaffed EU, which seethes over MS refusals to share code and play nice. Last month the EU fined Microsoft 1.3 billion Euros for interoperability issues. The company has 3 months to pay off the fine which increases daily as the value of the dollar sinks.

Some complained that the fine was staggering, but to keep this in perspective -- Microsoft is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. No company likes piles of cash to whither away but this relatively small fine is also an important piece of the business model, balanced by profits rendered from the same strategies that peeved the EU. Yes, Microsoft has promised to be less secretive and more open in the future but it will no doubt will appeal the decision.

The company may express yearning to be free on the internet and in mobile devices, but its bread and butter is embedded in its desktop products -- its software, its browser and its operating system -- mainframe as that may seem. Steve Balmer commented that the fines were for past issues now behind the company. But the company's profit is in proprietary systems and maintaining market share by shutting down competition. So what to expect? Naturally, Microsoft will continue to conduct business "competitively", as usual.It will build impressive backwards compatible software and strategize about how to squeeze profit out of some of Yahoo's services. To do this still more "key personnel" will be the large teams of razor-teethed lawyers, ready, no doubt, for many court bouts. Brussel's just initiated two new antitrust investigations against the Microsoft.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had a disaster on it's hands in 2005, with all the reporters asking Michael Brown sweat-inducing quesions that he could not answer during Hurricane Katrina. Despite purchasing a new Nordstrom shirt for the occasion and rolling up his sleeves to simulate working, Michael Brown and FEMA became the butt of criticism and lampoon for their blundering mendacity.

During the hurricane clean-up, FEMA tried to prevent the news media from reporting on the New Orleans body recovery, but this tactic was prevented by a lawsuit brought by CNN. Therefore, when disastrous fires struck California this year, FEMA had prepared, figuring out another way around the pesky reporters.

The agency called a news conference about the California fires on Tuesday 15 minutes before the event, and also gave out an 800 number so that reporters could call in (but not ask questions). Then, reportedly because not enough reporters showed up, FEMA staff asked the questions and FEMA staff answered the questions. These questions were supposedly not premeditated: "What type of commodities are you pledging to California?" Detail questions like -- "What's the difference between an "emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration?" could have been plucked from the a FEMA bureaucrats entry examination.

The fake FEMA questioners asked: "Are you happy with FEMA's response, so far?" FEMA's answer? "I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far. This is a FEMA and a federal government that's leaning forward, not waiting to react."

FEMA, having learned from from the Hurricane Katrina debacle that news conferences demand intense disaster preparedness, are so "forward leaning" that they'd prefer not to even have reporters at their news conferences.

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Acronym Required previously wrote about FEMA here, and during and after Hurricane Katrina, here and here and here, and here.

Voting Machines Hackable

Electronic voting machines are famous for their susceptibility to hacking, as shown by several groups, including Ed Felten and his team at Princeton, who write the Freedom to Tinker blog. The group has repeatedly shown various problems with electronic voting machines. Last fall they published a widely read paper on multiple problems with the Diebold Accuvote-TS, which they also demonstrated in this short video posted at Google.

Last week, following more research on voting machine fallibilities, California's Secretary of State Bowen decertified several voting machines in use in the state and imposed new conditions on the machines based on the findings.

There has been some mixed press about Bowen's move. Most of the press seems positive, however a few reporters focused on the "high costs" of implementing the system. Of course "cost" arguments always cause public hesitation but in the end catch up with us.

Bridges Fallible

"Bridge Disaster Could Mean Gas - Tax Hike", the New York Times warns today, noting that the catastrophe "could tip the scales in favor of billions of dollars in higher gasoline taxes for repairs coast to coast". It probably sent shivers down the backs of politicians and citizens alike, from coast to coast.

Of course, inspectors had warned about the structural integrity of the Minnesota bridge for years. But fortunately the warnings were quieted by an outside bridge review in 2001, under Mr. Elwyn Tinklenberg, former Governor Jesse Ventura's transportation commissioner. Current Governor Tim Pawlenty and the transportation commissioner Helen Molnau, (known as "Ma"), say they "relied on experts" to certify the bridge. They have steadfastly resisted tax increases that would have paid for road improvement.

As levees sink and pipes burst, U.S. infrastructure grades fall to C's and D's. Environmental waste clean up "costs", as does implementation of carbon regulation or taking the bus. Education costs are exorbitant too.

And Democracy's Costs So Malleable

But interestingly driving an SUV -- this site we previously linked to guesstimates that about 30% of the cars in NYC are SUVs -- doesn't "cost" too much even though gas is $3.00-4.00 per gallon. Almost any city budget can accommodate a new baseball stadium, lobbying groups spare no cost in attaining 30 second spots promoting their measures, and politicians spare no cost at getting elected.

But it seems like venturing down a dark path to suggest that a certifiably honest and accurate voting system costs too much. Doesn't this cheapen our vote, or even suggest perhaps, with twisted logic, that our votes can be bought?

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Acronym Required posts regularly on government spending dilemmas, especially with regard to the federal role in oversight (for instance with health issues), and less frequently public infrastructure.

We recently noticed the new Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) site for kids. We don't know when the kids site launched, but how could anyone consider preparing for or managing a disaster without "Herman, the spokescrab"?

The bright yellow site, I would say, is geared towards kids 2-25. Activities range from downloadable songs and coloring pages, to a "Hidden Treasures Activity", on the kids ready.gov site. There's Julia and Robbie: The Disaster Twins stories, and if you're ambitious, a "FEMA Careers for Kids Site".

The Kids Activity Survival Kit provides a list of items to pack in a disaster such as crayons, a "keep safe" box with "items that make you feel special", a puzzle, books, pictures of "the family and pet". and action figures:

"small people figures and play vehicles that you can use to play out what is happening during your disaster -- such as ambulance, fire truck, helicopter, dump truck, police car, small boats."

Maybe you can make life preservers for them and float them down the river. No, hopefully your action reenactment will play out what is actually happening during "your disaster". Action figures can be handy in a disaster.

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Acronym Required previously wrote about FEMA after Hurricane Katrina, here and here and here, and last February, here.

The Wall Street Journal published a front page story today about Justen Deal, who last year confronted Kaiser Permanente management about a 4 billion dollar IT project he thought had gone awry, and a projected 7 billion dollar budget deficit at Kaiser. In "How an E-mail Jolted a Big HMO", (temporary link) the Wall Street Journal noted, "flicking away whistle-blowers isn't as easy as it once was".

Acronym Required wrote an account of the story, "Healthcare IT: The Perfect Storm", last November. Why this story bubbled up on the front page of WSJ now, (albeit in their middle, soft news, people focused column ), when there's not exactly a dearth of seemingly critical world news, we don't know. Local papers have pretty much spurned the story. The IT aspects have been mentioned sporadically in healthcare blogs, the IT media, and the LA Times. This is an interesting business case not only in terms of dealing with internal IT implementation strategy and PR, but also for corporate human resource teams, who in this case, perhaps anachronistically, underestimated his kamikaze-like persistence.

DHS Management Woes

A survey of federal employees in 36 federal agencies recently found that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a massive department with over a hundred thousand employees, was at the bottom of the rankings:

• 36th on job satisfaction.
• 35th on leadership and knowledge management.
• 36th on results-oriented performance culture.
• 33rd on talent management.

Just last week news outlets reported that various concerned parties criticized the agency on its borders program, its treatment of asylum seekers, and its management of contracts.

The agency's troubles aren't new. In 2003, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) put DHS on its "high-risk" list as the agency faced significant management challenges in its mission to combine 22 existing agencies into one. The designation indicates potential for failure with catastrophic consequences. In 2005, the GAO kept the DHS in the "high-risk" category, because the agency had not made significant progress in several key areas such as financial accounting, information technology, and meeting goals previously highlighted by the GAO. This year the GAO put DHS on its "high-risk" list yet again because the agency failed to make the requisite progress.

In his address to the House Homeland Security committee last week, David Walker noted: "The current financial condition in the United States is worse than is widely understood and is not sustainable." However the security threats the US faces demand that DHS "operate as efficiently an effectively as possible in carrying out their missions." The GAO criticizes DHS leadership for many things including lack of transparency and slow progress meeting objectives. During his first outing to the new Congress last week, Secretary Michael Chertoff, a former judge, responded to questions and criticism about the DHS. He defended the the agency's progress, saying in his opening remarks:

"the Department of Defense took 40 years to get configured properly and the first secretary of defense committed suicide."

We're not sure whether someone should call a helpline on his behalf or whether, more likely, his statement was part of a defensive tactic to sooth his potentially hostile audience. Another official DHS official reported to a congressional committee looking at reports that DHS wasted millions of dollars:

"It is still the case that the department is just a collection of disparate, dysfunctional agencies," Ervin said. "There is yet to be an integrated, cohesive whole."

Then when ABC news interviewed a spokesman for Homeland Security about its dissatisfied employees, the spokesperson blamed the media and its focus on FEMA for the "low morale".

The official comments, if relayed even partially accurately by these sources, indicate that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to muddy the waters around its management responsibilities and evade culpability for its awful track record. We'll just pass that buck along, thank you very much, they seem to say.

FEMA -- Once Lame and Now Lame Again

DHS officials cast a wide net all the way to the media to find someone to blame. It's a familiar ploy, however its unpersuasive. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was one twenty-two departments rolled into the DHS when it was formed in 2003. FEMA received very well deserved criticism during and after Hurricane Katrina, but the media doesn't control or manage FEMA, FEMA and DHS do.

Many of the agencies rolled into DHS were no doubt "dysfunctional" before the reorg. But to unmuddy the waters a bit, we should point out that contrary to assertions, FEMA, for one, was not always dysfunctional. Acronym Required wrote several articles about the agency's performance during and after Hurricane Katrina and took a look at the history of the discombobulated organization.

In "FEMA-Turkey Farm Redux?", we reported that FEMA was once the laughing stock of government. In the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, when George H.W. Bush presided over government, Senator Hollins once commented that the FEMA staff was "as sorry a bunch of bureaucratic jackasses as I've worked with in my life". Through the early 1990's the agency continued to be known by unkind labels such as "a turkey farm", and "a political dumping ground". Four-fifths of FEMA's employees were dissatisfied according to one survey.

But FEMA turned itself around during the Clinton administration under James E. Witt. Many people were taken aback by the suddenly effective agency, including Senator Feinstein, who practically gushed: "I really think FEMA is a new agency...it is the difference between day and night".

FEMA is once again dysfunctional, now that its been subsumed by the Department of Homeland Security. The MBA President's administration formed the dysfunctional DHS, and the dysfunction prevails despite intense post Hurricane Katrina FEMA scrutiny and reorganization. We all know that the challenges of public management can be stupendous, but can the US afford to condone continual failure in such a critical organization?

Management in Never Never Land

Is Chertoff suggesting that forty years is a management turnaround timeline suitable for the 21st century? Although he may be well on his way to meeting this goal, it doesn't seem as though the Department of Homeland Security is stepping up to the type accountability demanded by effective businesses or government. Not to mention, the image of responsibility shirking doesn't become the Administration of the MBA president.

According to the President's government management plan we have a new type of government now, one run more like a business. The administration announced the new management plan back in the summer of 2001 and fleshed it out in the document "The President's Management Agenda", released in 2002. At the top was a quote attributed to Governor George W. Bush. Government always "begins" things, he said and, "declare[s] grand new programs..." But this isn't the way it should be.

".....What matters in the end is completion. Performance. Results. Not just making promises, but making good on promises. In my Administration, that will be the standard from the farthest regional office of government to the highest office of the land."

Bush wanted to revamp a government full of "underperforming agencies..[that] rarely face consequences for persistent failure". His agenda pledged a new era where "high performance will become a way of life." Under the sub-heading "Manageable Government", the President's promised to "focus on results", and to "impose consequences" on lackluster performing agencies.

"Underperforming agencies are sometimes given incentives to improve, but rarely face consequences for persistent failure. This all-carrot-no-stick approach is unlikely to elicit improvement from troubled organizations"

But in a recent 240 word summary of progress called "What are our management practices like today? (1/30/07)" published on "Results.gov", DHS, the agency well known for its catastrophe bumbling and financial incompetence, escaped mention. Results.org is dedicated to tracking the administration's government management goals. The performance summary mentions two agencies that apparently have "the greatest ability to be effective", and six others "who did what they said they would do this past quarter". High standards indeed, but DHS wasn't among these agencies.

Optimistically, Results.org points out that "most agencies continue to make good progress on the Faith-Based, Real Property and Improper Initiatives...". Perhaps the agency performed these amorphous goals superlatively? Because the President visited DHS this week and said that he was "proud" of the work they had done on terrorism. OK, there's the carrot, but where's the "stick", and who is accountable for these "grand plans" for government reorganization?

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Acronym Required previously commented on FEMA and GAO in the Project & Process Management part of the site.

The Perfect Storm, Corporate IT vs. Determined Employee

Kaiser Permanente employee Justen Deal noticed few months ago that the custom implementation of the health care provider's Epic Systems records management system, dubbed "HealthConnect", was costing billions of dollars but was plagued by persistent problems that effected health care delivery. In addition, the employee projected future operating expenses and expected revenues and asserted that Kaiser faced a $7 billion dollar deficit in the next couple of years. He wrote some letters to individuals in charge of corporate oversight, to the board, and to various internal parties who he thought should be concerned. They said they'd investigate his concerns, they warned him not to talk to the board, they said he was mistaken, and at times claimed they didn't understand his complaints. He sent more evidence. Finally Kaiser lawyers said they investigated his complaints and said they were all baseless. Not satisfied, he sent letters to several California state agencies. All of these communications are now posted at his site called www.fixkp.org, and make for very interesting reading. Finally he sent a letter to over 50,000 employees, again listing his concerns.

In response, the CEO of Kaiser, George Halvorson, wrote a letter of his own to all 151,000 employees refuting Justen Deal's allegations. "The person who wrote the e-mail is a young man relatively new to KP whose job involves publications...", he starts out. "Overall, the e-mail was an unfortunate combination of partial facts, old data, incomplete data, "conspiracy" thinking, and naivete´.", he ends. He addresses the complaints. Responding to Justen's comments about his replacement of the board right after he was hired at Kaiser, he says, "I suspect he hasn't evaluated very many Boards."

He dismisses Justen's questions about an audit of his position at a previous employer, a Minnesota managed healthcare organization called Health Partners. The Minnesota Attorney General's Office's audit was "critical" his $5.5 million dollar compensation package when he left and his financial oversight as the CEO. But Halvorson said the 'routine' audit cleared him: "no actions, no citations, no regulation violations and no mandatory results of any kind."

Justen Deal also criticized the CIO of Kaiser for simultaneously serving as a director of a company hired as a consultant for Kaiser, while he was employed at Kaiser. Halvorson's letter declared that the CIO "was not, in fact, a principal or Board member of the "Tanning" company when they did our systems evaluation work. However, "J. Clifford Dodd", the CIO of Kaiser, was indeed at Kaiser when he hired Tanning Technologies, a consulting company that lists him as director "John C. Dodd", at least according to Tanning's own SEC filing in 2002.

Mr. Halvorson also addressed the technical problems implementing Epic Solutions system that Deal outlined: "KP HealthConnect issues are both inaccurate and wrong". The HealthConnect system is working well, he said. However a ComputerWorld author wrote an article titled "Problems abound for Kaiser e-health records management system: An internal report details hundreds of technical issues and outages", which details a few of the hundreds of problems listed in the 722 page internal report on the system's issues and outages. The system has been down for hours at a time causing various critical disruptions within the Kaiser healthcare system:

• "On May 10, a power outage that lasted for 37 hours and 9 minutes affected multiple facilities [causing pharmacy and tracking problems]..If a patient were transferred during this time they would need to track their location manually [and]....users are reporting that multiple patients are showing in the wrong beds"
• March 26, for 3 hours and 51 minutes, "users in multiple locations..were unable to access patient info or update patient info"
• April 10 for 1 hours and 23 minutes, drug information is not population for nurses, pharmacists, and technicians in one office and they "cannot see patient updates for new [drug] orders or changes in meds, such as stopping orders..."
• "On June 7, for 6 hours and 34 minutes, labs were unable to collect data, run tests and provide test results."
• "On Oct. 10, for 3 hours and 24 minutes, doctors and nurses in several facilities were unable to retrieve critical medical information to treat patients."

These were only a few of the issues. IT is tough business, especially for critical systems in healthcare and banking. Clearly, this is a massive system subject to significant challenges. Kaiser Permanente has 151,000 employees, 37 medical centers, 12,000 physicians, 8.6 million members and $31 billion in operating revenue. The plan to get the system up and running in three years was ambitious. So someone like Justen, who is not accustomed to the thorny business of IT would be rightly shocked at the messiness of it all. That the system was supposedly written in "MUMPS (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System) -- a health care programming language originally developed in the 1960s", may or may not be relevant, but the software had certainly never been scaled to this size organization. Various sources report different issues, architecture, planning, personnel and management failures.

Throughout his communications, Justen Deal expressed concern about a projected $7 billion dollar deficit that Kaiser was facing. Halvorson said in his letter, "The memo leads off with a mention of our financial future. Interestingly, that's the one area where the e-mail may have done us all a service". Halvorson says he warned about the looming deficits in internal memos. The projected deficit was news to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published a story about Deal's email and the impending deficit titled: "Kaiser: Critical need to cut rising costs $7 billion in losses if no action taken, HMO report says". Halvorson told the Chronicle that Kaiser has started cutting costs -- that wouldn't affect patient care.

Many, many of the details of this story are unknown. In the end, similar to Katrina, if there's a massive hurricane brewing off the coast, then FEMA's assurances that they're prepared and everything is fine will only subdue the masses until the storm hits. Kaiser will hopefully get the system up and running -- and if so it will be a feat. In the meantime, the turmoil is very real. The CTO, Cliff Dodd, resigned the day after Deal sent his mass email. Kaiser denies that the Chief Technology Officer's resignation is at all related to Justen's allegations.

Business and the Web 2.0 Generation?

On one hand Justen Deal believes he's preventing another Enron, which is arguably an idealistic or grandiose idea. Its easy to imagine that he was infected by disgruntled IT employees whose project was canned in the decision to license Epic. It's easy to argue that he's young and naive, which is the tack that Kaiser took in their correspondence. However, while anyone can make these points, a reading of the letters on the www.fixkp.org website shows that the organization handled him abysmally. One letter written by outside counsel addresses just one of his complaints by curtly listing about 30 other organizations using the Epic System, followed by: "Do you have any concerns that you can list with us about the decision-making process used by these providers to select Epic?".

It was clearly a fishing expedition and Deal quickly questioned why the lawyer, who Kaiser used to defend itself against wrongful termination suits, was fielding operations questions addressed to the board. He writes back in a letter posted on his site that his opinions of Kaiser's Epic selection processes are "irrelevant" and that engineering documents addressed this. Obviously he couldn't answer her question about other organizations' decisions, he said. He did offer information about the relative sizes of some of the organizations she listed. Some had several hundred members, compared to Kaiser's 8.6 million, others had several hundred doctors, compared to Kaiser's 13,000, doctors, etc.. In this view then, the system wasn't proven to scale or architected to an organization the size of Kaiser.

Clearly, his opinions of the system aren't isolated, since outages have caused turmoil across the organization. A recent article in Harvard Business Review talks about different IT implementations including enterprise systems that impose process changes at all levels of the organization. The author gives the example of another health care organization that failed:

"In 2002, a Boston-based hospital set up an IT system that replaced handwritten prescriptions with online orders. ...Even though studies had demonstrated that the system would reduce medication errors, physicians bitterly resisted. They complained that the computer-based process was slower and less convenient than paper-based ordering and that the built-in error checking didn't work. They protested so strongly that the hospital was able to roll out the system in only a few departments. Today, most of the doctors continue to write prescriptions on paper and fax them to the hospital's pharmacy..."

It wasn't the only Healthcare IT project to fail. On a larger scale, Britain's 2002 healthcare initiative evidently wasted $24 billion, and apparently two Members of Parliament say the project is "sleepwalking toward disaster." The author of the Harvard Business Review article says, "In fact, the biggest mistake business leaders make is to underestimate resistance when they impose changes in the ways people work." He quotes a CIO, who said '"I can make a project fail, but I can't make it succeed. For that, I need my [non-IT] business colleagues."' Successful system implementations need to broad support at all levels. This may be even more important in the future.

Deal was definitely a thorn in Kaiser's side, someone who was young, unintimidated, and apparently not yet appropriately practical (or cynical, depending on your view). Kaiser's tactics, aimed at quieting him, seemed to have the opposite effect. The internet gave easy public access to SEC statements, newspaper articles, attorney generals' audits. He dug deeper, found more evidence, wrote precise, articulate letters, and did not back down. He thought he had important insight that was being ignored. In a way, Kaiser executives underestimated both technology and Mr. Deal.

Twenty somethings virtually grew up with the internet. Deal's identity is available at his blog, and anywhere else on the internet, which is typical to many people his age, who for better or worse, have markedly different attitudes about privacy then previous generations. The attitude that information, personal, corporate or otherwise is free and accessible, flies in the face of a certain corporate theology in which information is coveted and hoarded, and top down management restricts open exchange especially between personnel levels. In this age, is this an effective way to manage? Is it an effective structure with which to implement an enterprise wide system? The corporation's attitude about information clashed with today's information accessibility.

Is Justen Deal and Kaiser an isolated event or a new trend? Either way, it could be a wake up call for organizations. But whether Kaiser is contemplating this, or as we speak rewriting the employee handbook rules and toiling over their public relations effort, remains to be seen.

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Acronym Required has written other articles about management issues here.

Preparedness

Katrina prompted little reaction from FEMA, but a overwhelmingly reaction from media and citizens. Perhaps FEMA's inaction made us realize the error of our assumptions about government planning at the local, state, county and national levels. If we were once complacent, we're reminded to pay attention and demand that agencies prepare for disaster. As well, we can't be unprepared ourselves.

But before we talk about that, there's one red herring that needs to be dispelled first, prompted by those odious officials who berate citizens for "insisting on living in disaster prone areas". These after the fact know-it-alls use disasters to parade out on their high horses, and crazy as it seems, this always gains traction with the media. The officious adminstrators can understandably never be found before the disaster. They're never spotted standing at the city hailing warnings to citizens as they move in, shop, do business, or go to work and bolster the region's economy. Yet when disaster strikes, there they are, lecturing hapless survivors about their choice of domicile.

Despite the hypocrisy, or perhaps because of it, citizens need to know the risks in their town and state and demand disaster preparedness. Where are the local dams, levees and fault lines? Have you stored extra batteries and gallons of water, noted fire-escapes, and collected valuable papers? Local resources such as chapters of the American Red Cross offer information and courses for family disaster preparedness.

If we are expected to be prepared, and indeed our lives depend upon it, we need leadership too. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina there's clamoring for "experienced disaster management" leaders. But do we know what a capable leader is? Some disasters happen once a century. One person or community's disaster leadership might be capable to handle a Category 2 hurricane, another's might collapse in a 6.3 earthquake, while another leader may fall apart when the toilet overflows.

To this end, FEMA has a cache of information on its website. The site (now being updated) has basic preparedness module descriptions on this disaster page. FEMA's independent study site has 50-60 multi-part training units ranging from "National Dam Safety Program", to "Metropolitan Medical Response System"(MMRS), "Animals in Disaster" and "Government Response to a Disaster Declaration" (The diagram below, though a tad psychedelic, is from this unit -- note the full circle solution)

The "Community Hurricane Preparedness" modules, and these on this site are aimed at professionals -- units like "Leadership and Influence".

Management

"Introduction to Incident Command System" (ICS), which gives disaster coordination guidelines for every event possible event - fires, tornadoes, floods, ice storms, infectious disease outbreaks, Super Bowls and parades.

"[ICS]was developed in the 1970's following a series of catastrophic fires in California's urban interface. Property damage ran into the millions, and many people died or were injured...Surprisingly, studies found that response problems were far more likely to result from inadequate management then from any other single reason. Weaknesses were often due to: Lack of accountability...poor communication...inefficient uses of available communcations systems...[no]systematic planning process..."

One project management perfect storm during Hurricane Katrina was interagency coordination, a management problem that was recognized decades ago before the Hurricane brought it to the fore. Thirty years after ICS was formed, communication in disaster preparedness and mitigation continues to fail, with numbing, mind-boggling regularity. But there's a training module to handle that too.

"Effective Communications" has "Success Tips for Media Interviews", which suggests ideas to "help you stay in control of the interview process". The advice includes "avoid speculation", remember to "speak in 'sound bites'", and "avoid wearing stripes, 'busy' patterns, and red." You should "never repeat inaccurate or damaging information spoken within a reporter's question". It doesn't address how to avoid spewing inaccuracies yourself, except to advise calling after the interview to correct the record.

Some say Brown and FEMA's response is symbolic of this administration or this century. Others say that bureaucracies are always inept. However government agencies can be effective, and as Acronym Required's earlier article, FEMA: Turkey Farm Redux. FEMA was at point, an effective agency. As for us, we can prepare, we do vote, do chose our leaders, our employees, and our politicians. Moreover, we should analyze our political choices with more care.

There is little time to dally. Hurricane Ophelia whirls menacingly off the coast of the Carolinas.

Shutting the Dike After the Flood

The head of the Katrina disaster and FEMA was sent packing back to the capital yesterday when the administration acknowledged that perhaps he wasn't doing such a "heckuva job" after all. The realization seemed to come with the same alacrity as the Undersecretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response Michael Brown came to grips with the strife of the stranded survivors. Despite the righteous indignation about the resumes and unpreparedness of the top FEMA officials, the level of indignation is somewhat curious.

These are the same FEMA people who have responded to disasters since 2003. Brown reported in a speech this year that in 2004, "FEMA responded to 65 major disasters and seven emergencies in 46 states and/or U.S. territories". He also led FEMA through multiple disasters in 2003. The loudest complaints before Katrina were about how FEMA gave out too much money in Florida to undeserving homeowners who weren't effected at all by a hurricane.

In some cases the criticism was a complete afterthought. The Denver Post wrote an editorial on December 4, 2003 titled "Good Pick For FEMA Successor", noting how Brown had the experience to lead the agency:

"He will coordinate response to any new terrorist attack...As FEMA's deputy director, Brown helped guide that agency's response to the Sept. 11 attacks, so he would bring firsthand experience to the heart-wrenching task...But he must also attend to FEMA's historic mission: helping communities respond to, and recover from, natural disasters...Brown has experience here, too, since he supervised FEMA's response to the massive Western wildfires last summer. He also held various local and state offices in tornado-plagued Oklahoma, so he understands how nature's rampages can devastate communities."

The paper only revealed the more dicey side of Brown's resume following hurricane Katrina. Is such hindsight useful?

FEMA and HDS deserve the wrath of the public. But one agency's failure does not absolve anyone else, culpability is not a 'zero sum game' and therefore it does not detract from the stunningly feeble federal response to point out that there were some flaws with the city and state responses too. Governor Blanco's administration no doubt deserves some heat for Louisiana's response, as does the city.

What Can Brown Do For You???? Good Question.

The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday about the New Orlean's communication infrastructure collapse during the storm; "At Center of Crisis, City Officials Faced Struggle to Keep in Touch". The New Orleans' "command center" fell apart when the back-up generator ran out of diesel and land lines didn't work, and for the first two days the city disaster team was totally "in the dark". Cell phones were spotty at best, best being when staff leaned precipitously out of one particular balcony on one particular top floor of the Hyatt hotel where the team was holed up.

It only got worse when the levees broke. The mayor's group fought off potential looters and found themselves reduced to looting themselves as they ran out of supplies and ended up in the sorry strife as those they were charged with protecting:

"forced to rely on ingenuity [internet phone] and extreme methods, including breaking in to an Office Depot [to acquire electronics, servers, etc] --as the chief of police stood watch."

Today the fallout from the storm is personally devastating and civilly disruptive. The legal systems in New Orleans are scattered. The storm washed out lawyers, judges, plaintiffs, defendants and records. We believe that sophisticated banking networks and ever clever software technology precisely maximizes the banks profits while minimizing its risks in day to day transactions. However the local banks are now reduced to verifying customers via their employees' memories. Employees dole out cash to recognizable customers.

What Can You do about Future Brown's? Better Question.

A good part of our traumatized response is our fearful knowledge that many of us will face a similar disaster ourselves, in a San Francisco earthquake, a Missouri earthquake, a hurricane, a volcano, tornado or other tumultuous calamity. The faces on TV are close-up this time. Close, and not in a far away place where we are unlikely to vacation- the Andaman islands or Sri Lanka. Nearby, in one of very our own favorite cities, even if we've only been there for a convention. The Wall Street Journal article about the mayor's team's struggles tells us that "of 70 major cities in the U.S., the new Orleans municipal Web site was ranked dead last [in 2002] in a quality survey". This is silly of course. All the other cities might have superior websites but that does not reassure us of our fate - website quality does not predict disaster preparedness. But other things do.

While the federal reaction to Katrina was inept, Brown's removal serves merely as a totem of our collective despair about the untimely critical incapacitation of our technology, communications, and management systems alike. The outraged response to the government bungling of Hurricane Katrina aid is similar to the public furor and special election two years ago on the west coast where Californians, exasperated with state administrative quagmires, jettisoned Governor Gray and replaced him with Governor Schwarzenegger. That costly public response did not resolve California's problems, nor will Brown's banishment resolve our inability to manage stupendous disaster. It is psychologically reasonable that in the face of such a disaster we respond vehemently by blaming one person or agency -- but we should also consider broader actions.

The blatheringly inept response of government, combined with the state's and city's misjudgments should not blind us to our own participation. We vote, chose our leaders, our employees, and our politicians - the "public servants". Each public employee is an important one. We write editorials, we approve the agendas. We should remind ourselves now that those who we chose for their "loyalty", whose habit is to tell us what we want to hear, will not necessarily be most capable of thinking on their own when crises sweep away their cues.

FEMA Under the Bushes

Senator Ernst F. Hollings (D-S.C.) once described FEMA's staff as "as sorry a bunch of bureaucratic jackasses as I've worked with in my life". It was September 1989, in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo, which struck the Carolinas during George HW Bush's administration. FEMA had apparently taken ten days to respond.

Three years later, Hugo survivors had a sense of deja-vu as they watched FEMA's response to Hurricane Andrew, which struck Miami-Dade county the morning of August 24, 1992.

FEMA is now the butt of criticism in the wake of Katrina and remarkably, despite the differences in the scopes of the disasters, once again there are similarities between the Federal response to Hurricane Andrew which George HW. Bush (Sr). presided over, and the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina by the younger George Bush thirteen years later.

In 1992, mere hours before Andrew hit, Michele Baker, Miami-Dade's chief hurricane coordinator at the time, "took panicked calls from elderly residents", who weren't physically capable of evacuating. Baker had to respond by informing them that no one could help them. (The Seattle-Times, May 28, 2000)

Thousands of people were stranded without food or water and finally, following three days long days with no federal response, Dade county emergency management director Kate Hale lost her patience in a nationally televised news conference: "Where in the hell is the cavalry on this one...They keep saying we're going to get supplies. For God's sake, where are they?" (St. Petersburg Times, August 28, 1992)

"WE NEED HELP," a front-page Miami Herald headline implored August 28th. Stranded homeless survivors scrawled signs begging the president to do something and some took up arms to protect themselves. The Washington Post reported that food and water delivery was stalled:

"Roadblocks set up to stop looters continued to hamper delivery of emergency food supplies. Truckers with emergency food aid were forced to wait for police escorts after reports that some drivers had been shot and beaten by thugs. State troopers...began stopping all trucks entering the state, demanding that the drivers show that they and their cargo had been officially requested" (August 28, 1992)

FEMA didn't move supplies to Florida ahead of time because no official disaster had been declared wrote the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "While thousands of southern Floridians remained without adequate food or shelter, state and federal officials bickered...people waited in line: for food stamps, for mail, for Red Cross vouchers...[for] the Federal Emergency Management Agency." (September 1, 1992)

Pressured in a re-election year, Bush Sr. postponed his Kennebunkport vacation and repeatedly toured the area, offering sympathy to the citizens and TV cameras. He insisted angrily that his concern was not politically motivated and that it was no time for "finger pointing" and assigning blame.

Turkey Farm: A Place Where Friends of The Bushes Stay Out of Trouble...Ohhh...

At the time, congress was vitriolic in its criticism of FEMA's hurricane response. The FEMA leader, Wallace E. Stickney, a protege of former White House chief of staff John H. Sununu, was roundly criticized for his inabilities. Chauffeured cars and long lunches were routine and an audit showed that a majority of FEMA's budget was still dedicated to preparing for nuclear war response. People lobbied to have the agency disbanded altogether. Some thought that the military was the only agency that was capable of taking over disaster response. A House Appropriations Committee issued a report in 1992 that apparently said about FEMA:

"is widely viewed as a political dumping ground, 'a turkey farm'...where large numbers of positions exist that can be conveniently and quietly filled by political appointment." (Washington Post)

So is FEMA the same entrenched bureaucratic agency unchanged except for the name of the hurricane, the name of the leader and the decade? FEMA director Michael Brown -- "Brownie" to his homies -- has the been the recipient of sharp criticism for his lack of diplomacy skills and his stated ignorance of the facts of the ground. The media, politicians, and citizens alike sense ineptitude and have reveled in verbal flogging of the FEMA leader, as FEMA slowly and haltingly responds to the Katrina disaster. No self respecting journalist has failed to hammer home the fact that Brown's previous post was with an equine association - IAHA. Even that position proved challenging apparently ("he was not a horse guy").

No, this is a 'same but different' FEMA. When Bush Sr. lost the election and Clinton was elected, polls showed that vast numbers of FEMA employees at the time wanted to leave- four-fifths of the employees polled in a survey thought FEMA was badly managed. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said: "I feel sorry for whomever heads this agency. The way it is structured, FEMA's role is to fail...I don't think FEMA can be a paper-pushing agency and a rapid response force at the same time." (Washington Post, January 28, 1993).

The James Witt Turnaround Under Clinton

However despite the qualms, the Clinton administration named James E. Witt to lead FEMA. Witt was an Arkansas native, a "country boy" with *merely* a high school diploma. Skeptics doubted his ability to lead such a large organization and questioned whether a "local official" with only four years of state-level emergency management experience and no college education could be effective. According to the Washington Post, Leo Bosner, FEMA union president at the time retorted: "Look at Stickney. He had tons of government experience and all kinds of college degrees, but he was a disaster." (April 1, 1993)

The old FEMA was completely revamped under Witt. Stickney was ousted but not before he held an award ceremony where he gave medals and cash awards to staff, aides, a firehouse in his hometown, and to Marilyn Quayle - because she had worked "in a dirty T-shirt and dungarees", during Hurricane Andrew (Washington Post Feb 17, 1993). Under Witt, the new agency had a place in the Cabinet and the ear of the administration.

Witt instituted "Project Impact", which led widespread initiatives from helping homeowners in earthquake-prone Pacific Northwest shore up foundations, to educating the hurricane prone regions. Disaster prevention, training, and education were as important clean-up. Clinton stressed the role of federal government in disaster recovery. There was no "drown it in the bathtub" mentality to get in the way of helping citizens prepare and recover from disaster.

Witt received kudos from congress, from local officials and citizens alike for his leadership in the agency's turn-around. He oversaw federal relief efforts for hundreds of disasters - including the $ 5.5 billion Northridge, Calif., earthquake and the 1993 Midwest floods. A FEMA official said to the Christian Science Monitor (April 6, 1998): "After Witt, I don't think you'll see any other FEMA director come in who doesn't already have an emergency response background,". The Washington Post reported glowingly August 23, 1998 in; "It Took a County Judge to Bail Out FEMA; James Lee Witt's Arkansas Experience Reshaped Agency and Its Approach to Disaster": "Today, state officials who deal directly with the agency are virtually unanimous in their praise for the agency." Lee Helms, director of the Emergency Management Agency for Alabama, which had recently been through devastating tornadoes told the paper:

"I think there has been a total restoration of FEMA...Witt has cut out the red tape; there's much less bureaucratic nonsense and much more responsiveness to the state's needs. As we say in the South, he's got a head full of sense."

Jane Bullock, Witt's chief of staff who had worked at FEMA since 1980 when the agency was established under Carter, also praised Witt's accomplishments in the Post article. Not only were people not embarrassed to work for FEMA she said, but "we will never be the FEMA we were before".

Redux

Not so fast cowboy. In 1994, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), in putting forth a proposal to legislate changes in the agency, praised Witt, but said she was worried that if Witt left:

"that response to major disasters will fall apart...We may go right back to political hacks who don't know the difference between responding to a flood versus an earthquake."

Senator Feinstein came to the defense of the organization, saying, "I really think FEMA is a new agency...it is the difference between day and night". (Washington Post).

Flash forward ten years to today. George Bush Jr. has been in office a few years, and now FEMA has been folded into DHS, subjected to multiple changes and re-sizing. Katrina is a monstrosity of a disaster, but so would be another terrorist attack or an earthquake in San Francisco or numerous other unforeseen crises. Trouble has been brewing for the agency for a while but perhaps in the aftermath of Katrina people truly suspect that the old FEMA, the "turkey farm" banquished by Witt, has risen again? FEMA again needs triage.

There is a lot of discussion about improved processes these days, including everything from enterprise project management, development methodologies like ITIL and RUP, project portfolio management. A colleague complained once: "They are talking about creating a complicated, time consuming process involving spreadsheets and GANTT charts that could all be done on the back of a cocktail napkin." This reminds one of some of the discussion in the chapter called "A Culture Of Discipline" in Jim Collins' book Good To Great:

...the purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline -- a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place. Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage the small percentage of wrong people on the bus, which in turn drives away the right people on the bus, which then increases the percentage of wrong people on the bus, which increases the need for more bureaucracy to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which further drives the right people away, and so forth. [p. 121]

When weighing whether to lean towards a greater level of process or stressing the amount of discipline and competence, Bob Lewis has some insight in his Advice Line weblog, in which he compares a "practice" versus a "process":

'In a practice, the "well defined steps" constitute more of a toolkit to be used by the practitioner; in a process the steps are more rigidly followed. In a practice, the intelligence remains almost entirely with the practitioner; designers move as much intelligence as possible into processes.

If you like, bowling is more of a process, baseball is more of a practice.

Which works better and in what circumstances? My opinion, unsupported by any research I'm aware of but richly supported by my personal experience, is that business redesign and application support (integration, development, enhancement and maintenance) are more effectively managed as practices. IT operations (networks, production control and so forth) are more effectively managed as processes.'

Sometimes within the context of higher ed administrative computing organizations, I've seen this corroborated. For example, the infrastructure folks heavily favor processes like maintaining fully resourced Microsoft Project plans, whereas, for an applications development team, I'd much rather establish a lightweight management infrastructure that has work decisions delegated to the lowest levels possible, with developers taking ownership of their project committments, using something like a sharepoint for documenting status and providing accountability.

Lewis's distinction between process and practice makes a lot of sense to me -- while an applications development team might work fine with the accountability framework described above, a group that is managing a 24x7 data center, will find that it makes a lot more sense to spend their creative energy developing replicable processes, not depending on good creative people to remember when they should make different types of backups or patch the servers.

As in most things, both distinctions are also a matter of degree -- some amount of process is almost always necessary and some greater amount is always too much. Process is not the cure for all ills: the overhead of process takes a bite out of an institutions' total available resources. The correct use of process is analagous to the correct use of models in software development -- as Martin Fowler noted: Models are not right or wrong; they are more or less useful." With responsibility for the lives of human beings hurtling through outer space at hundreds of miles an hour it's only logical that NASA's software assurance process is much more rigorous than the requirements for something like a university class enrollment system.

A large government or corporate organization will face tension between distributed, departmental needs and the needs of the central organization. This is one of the central themes explored in Peter Weill and Jeanne Ross's excellent book, IT Governance. They wrote about one approach to foster two-way communication (as well as to help get buy-in), when faced with such tension:

"Business/IT Relationship Managers Local business units and functions can find centrally coordinated mandates onerous or confusing. Business/IT relationship managers play an important role in communicating mandates and their implications and supporting the needs of business unit managers while helping them see benefits rather than inconveniences. Effective relationship managers must be true hybrids – equally comfortable discussing business issues, such as effective market segmentation, and technical issues, such as the best design of a distributed database to collect market segment information. When they succeed, relationship managers make any governance archetype more effective."

We will consider some other areas of this book in upcoming posts, as well.

This excerpt from the Technology Alignment section (a good read) of the California Performance Review discusses the impact of California's lack of project portfolio management:

According to Thom Rubel of the META Group, "The institutionalization of portfolio management responsibility can begin to build relationships across the government enterprise that effectively bring budget and finance offices and IT organizations into better understanding and consensus on strategic IT investments during fluctuating budget cycles. Creating portfolio management awareness within government can begin to build the bridge of understanding between IT and budget organizations and program agencies to more effectively and strategically invest in executive branch and legislative public-policy priorities."[36]
Despite its value to the state, there are currently no statewide policies, guidelines or evidence of adoption of best practices for technology portfolio management practices. For the most part, policy-makers are still not thinking of technology projects as a portfolio of investments for achieving a shared vision for how the state should serve the people, as pointed out by the Little Hoover Commission in 2000.[37]

From the recommendations in a GAO report (pdf) (html abstract) released 7/7/2004 titled COMPUTER-BASED PATIENT RECORDS: VA and DOD Efforts to Exchange Health Data Could Benefit from Improved Planning and Project Management:

• create and implement a comprehensive and coordinated project management plan for the electronic interface that defines the technical and managerial processes necessary to satisfy project requirements and includes (1) the authority and responsibility of each organizational unit; (2) a work breakdown structure for all of the tasks to be performed in developing, testing, and implementing the software, along with schedules associated with the tasks; and (3) a security policy.

[via David Fletcher's Government and Technology Weblog]

Bob Lewis wrote today on how IT people can work toimprove inefficient business processes:

My best suggestion is to start, not by identifying the processes themselves, but by identifying likely champions and sponsors of process improvement.
...
So your first step is identifying middle managers or executives who stand to benefit personally from process improvement. Make them your best friends. Chat with them. Schmooze with them. Talk over how you think the use of IT can support their areas, ask whether they're interested, and ask their advice on how to get something started.

The crucial networking step involves asking advice from potential sponsors on how to proceed. An additional point here is also that you will be more likely to succeed not only because you are paying attention to the sales process -- but you are also eliciting information (and requirements) from these potential sponsors, which will put you in a better position to re-engineer the processes with a functional sponsor in a way that will truly work. Networking gives you a double-payoff.