Letters

Intranet Intuition

First, let me say I am not a champion of how the Navy Marine Corps Intranet has been planned and executed ("Intranet Snafu," Aug. 15), but I do understand the reasons and needs for such an effort.

David McGlinchey quotes a Navy captain with a background in procurement who questioned whether a new network was necessary. He said existing technology met all his needs and he didn't know why you'd replace something that is free, simple and easy with something that is complicated and shackled. With all due respect to the captain, let's dissect his comments.

Existing technology met all his needs: While this may be true, I would hazard that it was not very secure and probably did not provide the necessary standardization across hardware, software, protocols, policies and procedures to allow additional capability that will be needed tomorrow. One of the primary advantages of the NMCI concept is it can provide a homogeneous architecture to support greater security, collaboration and data-sharing. This is simply not possible at the levels required with the current heterogeneous collection of uncoordinated and sometimes poorly designed and managed networks.

Why replace something that is free: His existing network is far from free. As I understand it, another of the primary goals of NMCI is to provide the Navy the visibility of IT and related expenditures that it currently does not have. Also, if properly designed and managed, NMCI should provide a large number of economies of scale to, in the long run, decrease operation and support costs.

Why replace something that is simple and easy: How user-friendly a system is can be an important aspect, but it must be balanced against functionality and security requirements. One of the downsides to an overarching program like NMCI is it tends to average out the user experience such that some users have an increased ease of use while some might experience a decrease in ease of use. The key is to make the complexity of the system transparent to the customer. Much of the initial negative feedback to a system such as NMCI, even if well-executed, can be attributed to a general resistance to change.

Most would agree, however, that NMCI could have done a much better job of managing user expectations.

There are many problems and challenges remaining for NMCI to overcome, but ultimately, if NMCI is allowed and able to proceed, in the long term it will be well worth the cost.

Sad Commentary

In your story "The Happiness Factor" (Aug. 15), I question whether that 300 percent increase in the gross national product from 1950 to 2000 shown on the chart reflects the doubling of our population at that time. It doesn't appear so (using per capita GNP would have automatically corrected for this). Adjusting for population, GNP has only "increased" 50 percent in real-dollar terms.

A 50 percent separation between the GNP measure and the flat-line happiness curve, rather than 300 percent, begins to explain the difference. If that remaining 50 percent GNP increase were adjusted for our declining natural asset base, with its impact on our quality of life, the two might come more into line. In 1950, this was a rich country, the major supplier of oil to the world, with reserves of iron ore and other minerals, and vast areas of undeveloped land.

As just one measure: In 1950, we had five acres of farmland per person versus 1.8 acres in 2000. With continued population growth, we will be down to about 0.7 acres per person by 2050. (The shrinkage is greater than a strict inverse proportion with population growth because of the vast quantities of land that are being lost to urbanization and highways.) That loss of farmland can be a proxy for the loss of open space in general.

GNP is a production model, not an asset model. As one wag said, "If I sell you my new $50,000 kitten, and you sell me your new $50,000 puppy, we will have added $100,000 to the GNP."

If I made $100,000 last year but had a negative net worth, I might not be very happy. If I knew that the combined debt of my country was $35 trillion, by one analysis, I might not be too happy. If I knew that the natural assets of my country had fallen to a fraction of what they were in 1950, in per capita terms, I might not be too happy.

Rather than trying to create some "happiness" measures within the economic system, I suggest that we begin systematically to account for the external costs of running industrial economies, to set up systems of national "natural asset" accounting, and to reform business and public entity accounting systems and public systems for assessing user costs/rebates for environmental impact.

Good Point

I loved "Missing the Point," (Sept. 1). When I go to a conference to make a presentation, I take a paper-you know-words, sentences and paragraphs. Simply handing out a bunch of PowerPoint slides is, in my mind, disrespectful of the people who came to listen to you. Depending on the presentation, I may have overhead slides to share, and make copious use of the flip chart (or whiteboard) because I want to be maximally responsive to the questions from my audience and I can't anticipate all of those in advance.

Using PowerPoint makes me, and my audience, captive to a preprogrammed sequence of thoughts that may be inappropriate as my audience shares their needs. I also carry my own markers and have never had a system failure with them.

In closing, a shameless plug for your magazine. Government Executive is one of the best magazines I read. I clip, share and refer to colleagues articles from every issue. I have about two-dozen articles clipped and saved for my Marine son when he returns in a few weeks from his second tour in Iraq. Your coverage of all the services, their challenges, their opportunities, their efforts- all of that has been first-rate.

Excellent article on the dumbing of presenters. I have always been baffled by presenters who use PowerPoint, then give you a copy of the slides, and to top it off, they read the slides straight through without deviating from the text. Needless to say, when the rating of their presentation comes around, they get a big fat zero from me.

Building Consensus

"Call to Action" (Sept. 1) correctly illuminates the serious organizational and operational problems the intelligence community faces. It fails, however, as does the 9/11 commission, to identify the key component in any possible solution. This component is consensus, and it is consensus that government agencies, like any large organization, have real trouble achieving.

Call it what you will, organizations must find some common ground on which to agree in order to create a kind of fluid atmosphere for an effective and flexible response to terrorism. The trouble is, most observers would expect this consensus to be addressed on technological or organizational levels, perhaps the most unlikely outcomes one can imagine. Agencies with their own personality, planning process, technical perspectives and heritages find it almost impossible to take common technological or organizational paths leading to true interoperability.

In government, at most levels, there is no final authority capable of imposing interaction or compromise. Attempts to ignore this painful reality always have and probably always will doom the efforts. Organizations become highly adept at resisting outside mandates, often raising that resistance to a fine art. So where will we find the basis for the consensus needed to improve our response to threat?

Our experience over a number of years in the strategic planning and design of organizational initiatives suggests that it may lie in the exchange of common information. Organizations that will fight to preserve automony are often willing to sign up for the exchange of common information content, creating a virtual pool of valuable information that can be used by all. As simple as this may sound, I have seen it work, turning agency IT and operating managers from angry conscripts into willing if not enthusiastic participants. The key is that consensus on content does not (and must not) involve the loss of autonomy or prerogative, the third rails of consensus-building.

The intelligence community will probably never get its various components to think or act alike. Rather than bemoaning this fact, it should begin the real work of figuring out what must be shared in order to make our threat response function as if they did. With such an approach, we may see the results we are looking for without dismantling the agencies charged with creating them.