The Forum

Building an intelligence cloud

Personally, I believe the bigger success is how CIA transformed their acquisition process from a . . . “waterfall design to spec” approach to an industry best practice: “buy a measurable outcome.” DOD, which has the lowest success rate in the entire tech sector (16 percent), could learn from this success . . . Thank you CIA for your thought leadership and vision.
John Weiler

More on the Amazon cloud
Well-written, researched and informative article about Amazon’s AWS cloud service and the intelligence community’s partnership. Happy to see that the intelligence community is thinking outside the box and has a clear vision in place for how it wants to utilize data and protect citizens.
Sergio Rodriguez

You have no idea what you’re talking about. Who do you think is paying for the infrastructure and cost for running this architecture? Amazon? And, of course, taxpayers will only be paying for services, which will be so much cheaper in the long run—of lies.  Sorry Charlie. Just the extreme and dismal opposite. I know, I work in this [intelligence community].
David

The Internet of Things
Proactive citizenry, blah, blah, blah. The government will put a kibosh on that. Democracy? A judge can take yours away in a heartbeat.
Red Baron

Rebalancing military power
Bandy about the “rebalancing” verbiage to your heart’s content, Gen. Dempsey. Just remember that we live in an increasingly volatile world which necessitates continued adherence to Teddy Roosevelt’s wise aphorism: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” It’s your job as JCS chairman to make sure the pols are made aware of the serious problems caused by deep cuts in our military capabilities that could well come home to confront us in the not-so-distant future.
Msgrowan

I missed Dempsey even coming close to stating the basic military dictum “in times of peace, prepare for war.” Our downsizing is viewed by our enemies, and we do have enemies, as weakness driven by politics. China is on course for a 600 ship navy while ours is being downsized, as are our other branches of the military. I fear that Dempsey is the wrong man in the wrong position at the wrong time. Dempsey speaks in political terms, not military. We need a leader that will stand strong for the military and our country.
Victoryman

The problem is too much investment in maintaining the American empire and less at home. Continuing to be
the world police is bankrupting us. There was a time when war wasthe last option not the first.
jxs9

Selling your ideas
I dunno. The first point, “convincing,” is obvious and makes sense. The other three, I think are no more applicable than, say, another 10 or 15 random points that anyone could dream up and write about. As for “convincing,” I’ve always felt that the art of debate should be emphasized in high school, and even more in college. Simply having good debating skills and some practice and experience with difficult groups seems to me the best way to sell your ideas
and yourself.
IMHO

Forming public-private partnerships
Public-private partnerships have been active in DOD for the past 16 years, known as P3. The goal of the P3 program is to fully leverage the power of partnerships to enhance and preserve unique organic capability by offering private industry access for mutual benefit. Having worked many partnerships during my Army career I can state that they do work if cooperation is the goal not competition. In the Army Material Command in FY12, $218 million in revenues were generated as a result of P3 program activities. The benefits are many and the risks to partners are small. I would suggest giving it a try.
John

Public-private partnerships are critical to the success of government operations that provide essential services and benefits. Such partnerships can help agencies reduce costs, simplify operations, and are easily scalable at times of increased and decreased need. Whether motivated by a natural disaster, terrorism, or an interruption caused by legislative shortfall, successful public-private partnerships can provide business continuity and resilience.
Charles Brooks

Hmmm . . . OK, thanks to GovExec for providing freebie info from KPMG. So, now can GovExec editors obtain some advice from a K Street guru, tips on how to move a new partnership thru Hill
committees—especially appropriations? . . . Also, some input from one of the crack Atlantic reporter-gurus would help handicap how to best time launching a new “partnership” and with who—Treasury? HHS? NIH?
Ben Taylor