Tech Insider: A terrible thing to waste
Ray Pardo used to spend his days thinking like a drug smuggler. Today, he's also learning how to think like a terrorist.
As a senior Customs inspector in Newark, N.J., the biggest seaport on the east coast of the United States, Pardo has developed an iconic reputation for his ability to foil smugglers who take enormous pains to hide contraband material-usually narcotics-in massive shipping containers. It seems there's almost no smuggling trick that Pardo can't beat. Today, Customs officials are terrified that those same smuggling methods might be used to hide weapons of mass destruction or their component parts, so Pardo is now on the front lines of a new war.
Pardo has created a cadre of homegrown technologies to find hidden items on his own, while massive corporations with teams of engineers have failed to bring their own anti-smuggling gadgets to market.
Consider one technology firm that has tried unsuccessfully for years to market to the government an acoustic identification device, a machine that uses soundwaves to locate hidden objects. When the device is used, the hidden objects resonate, creating unique audio signatures. Bricks of cocaine might sound might one way, bricks of explosives another.
But while the company has spent untold sums on research, development and marketing, Pardo has already developed a similar tool in his workshop using a compressed-air hammer and a stethoscope. Banging about with his contraption, he has uncovered cocaine stashes buried deep inside giant rolls of paper. With a quick adjustment of the device, Pardo says he could find metal bomb components hidden the same way.
Pardo's tool shed ingenuity has earned him the nickname "MacGyver" among his colleagues after the fictitious television adventurer famous for fashioning radios from paperclips and making boomerangs out of bubble gum. Others have affectionately nicknamed Pardo "Inspector Gadget." But for all his natural talent and the devoted following he's attracted, Pardo recoils when labeled a genius. He dismisses the praise, most of which comes from the chief inspector of the port, who trained Pardo and said he's thrilled the pupil has become the master.
On the floor of the giant inspection warehouse in Newark, Pardo looks like any one of the dozen or so inspectors who pop open suspicious containers and rifle through their contents. He is by no means meek, but he does blend into the scenery, playing with his toys in a corner of the warehouse where's he's built a "museum" that showcases Newark's biggest busts.
Pardo is a living library of ideas, anecdotes and wisdom. When he's not sniffing for dope or dirty bombs, he goes on tour. Pardo is a hot ticket as a guest lecturer at Customs facilities across the country. He imparts not just his tricks of the trade, but insight into how the mind of a crackerjack inspector works.
But for all his brilliance, Pardo is also a constant reminder of what the government stands to lose when he and others like him aren't around anymore. It's hard to find a federal agency today that isn't suffering from a deficit of institutional know-how as seasoned personnel leave public service. A mind like Pardo's is seldom seen, and when he walks out the door for the last time, everything inside that mind goes with him.
Enter the promise of technology. Today, a handful of software manufacturers believe they have developed tools that will take everything Pardo keeps in his brain and transplant it into the next best thing-a searchable database. The concept is called knowledge management, a set of theories about how to best capture the information people keep to themselves that could be of immeasurable value to others.
This isn't the kind of information you'll find in a book. It's what people come up with on the job to deal with common problems: knowing where to tickle the copy machine to clear a paper jam, for instance, or, in Pardo's case, how to use a hydraulic jack to look for concealed contraband. A knowledge officer would be responsible for harvesting Pardo's experience-collecting any physical plans he's created, indexing the speeches he's delivered to students, even archiving articles written about him-and creating a virtual replica of his analytic mind, one that could stand in for Pardo anywhere people log onto the Web.
Several federal agencies have appointed knowledge officers to oversee operations like these, but their work is in the fetal stage. Believers in knowledge management were once a small corps of almost cultish devotees. However, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks gave their cause a massive boost. Now, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are learning firsthand that putting information in a place where many people can get to it might do some good. Knowledge management has come into its own, and downloading what's in Pardo's head is likely to become as critical a component of homeland security as sharing data on suspected terrorists.
With an impending wave of retirements looming over federal agencies, managers will have to move quickly. They face a difficult choice: Find more Ray Pardos, or create them. By and large, the government can't do the former, because it can't compete with private-sector salaries. At the Port of Newark, dockside crane operators taking the containers Pardo inspects off ships see starting salaries of more than $100,000-far higher than the pay scale for jobs like Pardo's.
Option B, building an electronic repository of the knowledge of people like Pardo, makes more sense. Customs officials obviously agree, or they wouldn't have him spend so much time teaching. But sooner or later, Pardo is going to be a memory. No electronic database will ever truly replace him, but it might be an acceptable substitute. Given everything Pardo has to offer-and that the government could lose-it's certainly worth a shot.