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Posts Tagged ‘collaboration’

Dispensing with jargon

Posted in Policy, tagged , , , , on 9 June 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I’ve got a piece up for work on the nature of information sharing challenges, not dissimilar from some of the themes I’ve discussed here in the past.  So, in the name of shameless self-promotion, here’s an outtake:

The language of better communication has come to take on an almost dogmatic character.  Particularly within official circles the terms: coordinate, cooperate, collaborate, partnership, interagency, need to share, etc. are regularly invoked.  Where the limitations of rigid hierarchies have been exposed, the calls to engage horizontally across lines of authority have been raised.  Resources and expertise need not be consolidated in one place (a single agency or funding stream) if they can at least be made accessible to the range of participants in a common endeavor, yet this does not take into account a variety of sources of institutional inertia that make information sharing a much more challenging exercise in practice than theory.  Why is it that, despite considerable attention and effort, effective information management and information sharing remains elusive?

…

The responsibility for getting information management right should not fall only on those parts of the organization already taxed by making the best of confusing, dangerous, and rapidly shifting conditions.  There are fundamental questions that must be asked about the assumptions that have gone into building organizational processes and the technology architecture choices that have followed them.  This is not about theorizing the endless possibilities of the open Web, but about recognizing the limitations of idealized institutional designs, then scaffolding processes and capabilities to the realities of complex environments in the context of the digital information economy.

The full text can be found here.

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Regarding an information strategy

Posted in Policy, tagged , , , , , on 20 January 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I’m wary that anything I may write herein will trivialize the catastrophe that frames these considerations.  That, certainly, is not my intention.

As a detached observer of the scenes currently unfolding in Haiti, it is hard not to wonder how on earth the responders at hand will ever manage to return some semblance of normalcy to that wretched, devastated place.  Every step, any step, forward is surely a testament to human decency.  That some sense might be made of the informational chaos unleashed by the earthquake, let’s hope that those organizations in the midst of it all are able to lower their drawbridges to each other just enough.  I take a keen interest in understanding how barriers to trust and cooperation might be overcome, and this situation seems to provide ample cause to put certain organizational/cultural differences aside.

Wired’s Danger Room discusses some of the data and information sharing efforts from the military side (imagery and such) and points toward two distinct “collaborative portals” that the U.S. Southern Command has put in place for the present response effort…two unclassified portals, one “for official use” and one for everyone else — the academics, the NGOs, the IOs, and the non-military U.S. government.  Classified or not, if experience and organizational inertia are anything to go by, it would seem that this represents a certain redundant measure of unnecessary redundancy.  But that’s only a superficial impression.

As it turns out, the tool set being put forward must be enduring a trial “under fire”, so to speak, since development and testing were still underway when the earthquake occurred.  Going live with a system the day after an event seems a bit late to build the trust and working relationships needed during such a time, but circumstances are what they are.  Still, “collaboration” is not a feature.  Either it will occur or it won’t, and those of us with an interest in the matter ought look to enable it where we can and limit the barriers that even our best intentions might put in our way.  From provisioning capabilities to reifying assumptions about information, the paradigms within which we might not even be aware we operate can be wholly unconducive to what needs to be achieved.

The problem of developing and maintaining shared knowledge is one of near immeasurable complexity, and only few will get it right, so I fear that one-offs and ad-hocery still continue to define constructive informational spaces.

Godspeed, the task is too important.

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Building bridges through technology?

Posted in Policy, tagged , , , on 12 June 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Hint: it’s not always about the technology.  Now, let’s see if I can explain what I think that means.

Here’s a brief run-down of what’s been going on lately.

An information sharing project that I’ve been working on continues to tinker along its merry way with very little apparent sense of direction or awareness of its surroundings.  The reason why this is significant is because its surroundings are *supposed* to be the Web…that strange place where the book continues to be written on what it takes to emerge community-driven productivity, incubate niche technologies, and aggregate everything without centralizing anything.  Granted, that last one is a bit of hyperbole, but it’s good enough to make a point.  And the point is that you’re never going to build the thing that creates transparency, aligns disparate interests, and forges common purpose.  In fact, attempting to do so doesn’t just hint at conceit, but betrays an undue faith in an industrial model ill-suited to a digital age.  So stop pretending.  What you should be able to do, on the other hand,  is take yourself into the Web’s ecosystem, listen to what’s going on, and learn to play by its rules; begin to understand that Web tools are as much where they come from as how they are used or what they do.  Perhaps such introspection is esoteric superfluity, but — in most obtuse terms — if the capabilities of the Web are not the source of your diminished relevance, then what is to blame?

On a separate note, an ongoing discussion about precisely these issues is beginning to sound more and more like the previous one should have, though their specific problem spaces may only partially overlap.  I’m wary of too much initial optimism, mostly because of concerns I’ve expressed before; pursuing the generativity of the Web turns in many cases to chasing the dragon of false assumptions.  Nevertheless, this thing looks like it’s headed down the right track, with many different angles to prove out the deep-down ’2.0′ concepts in ways that should speak for themselves.  Heh, I’m curious what I’ll be saying once some more clarity emerges and the dialogue really starts to take shape.  If the conversation can be managed in a way that avoids fetishizing tools over potential capabilities, however, then I think there are some good times ahead.  Once we’re out the gate, I’ll start dropping names and shout-outs.

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Smoke and mirrors

Posted in Policy, tagged , , , on 31 March 2009 | Leave a Comment »

I’m in the DC area this week in support of an information sharing project that was conceived with the intention of taking some fundamental first steps towards overcoming social, organizational, and technological challenges that regularly and continuously plague humanitarian emergencies, disaster responses, and essentially any situation that forces too many interests into too little space and time.  I (and, as far as I can tell, the core of the people I work with) firmly believe that this is not a problem space that can be engineered, designed, managed, or similarly reduced to something more palatable.  These challenges must be embraced for, rather than in spite of, their complexity, and the vanity of perfect solutions ought to be rigorously questioned.  Often lacking, though imminently necessary, is a humble self-awareness of one’s niche in this greater ecosystem in order to come to terms with dynamics that one does not, nor will ever, control.

I enjoyed a layover in Zurich on Sunday morning (enjoyed, I should say, in no small measure due to Galbraith’s illumination of The Affluent Society, which I’ve been reading piecemeal for a shockingly long time), and picked up a complimentary copy of the International Herald Tribune.  I was struck by a piece by Christophe Fournier, president of the International Council of Doctors Without Borders.  In highlighting the conflicts between strict rule of law efforts and the ability to provide services to afflicted populations on “both sides of the frontline”, he cuts straight to a dilemma of humanitarian work: the need for “constant negotiation with local authorities as well as warring parties, who might be responsible for war crimes.”  That is to say, the effective delivery of non-partisan aid stands opposed to interaction with only savory characters.  Further, “humanitarian assistance is not necessarily compatible with … the armed protection of civilians.”  By extension, governments and security forces seeking to improve cooperation with, or at a minimum raise their own awareness of, non-aligned private organizations must avoid the fallacious tendency to think that neutrality is just another obstacle to be overcome.  Interests across organizations may coalesce in a crisis situation, but structuring aid and security plans around the assumption that cooperation can be designed is still a bridge too far.  We should also remember that “collaborate” has more than just positive connotations…

I worry that calls for a better exchange of information across organizations will bloat with the jargon of the day and yet lose focus on the real challenges associated with complex operating environments.  Reality forces institutional boxes – of governments, of militaries, of NGOs and International Organizations – into shared spaces, but growing one’s own bubble to incorporate the others is not the way forward.  Similarly, a resistance to assimilation might underscore a level of credibility superior to that of the sycophants lining up outside your door.  Effectively bridging organizational divides must be tied to a long view of the challenges that continue to arise, and quick fixes well within the comfort zone are not the way forward.

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Good intentions…

Posted in Policy, tagged , , , , , , on 21 March 2009 | 2 Comments »

I’ve been mulling over some items that caught my attention this past week that highlight some divergent angles being taken to address essentially similar problems: Web communications, decentralized authority, and agile organization.  Though it would be too much to assume anything about the motives behind these various initiatives, what came to mind is that cliché about the road paved with good intentions…you get the idea.

An old document reemerged in the inbox this week related to this Civil-Military Fusion Centre that NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) is launching in order to be the “one-stop shop” for all “non-classified military/security, humanitarian and development information provided by functional experts in relevant military and civilian organisations.” The paper is really worth a look, as it packages a noble goal — making sense of a thoroughly complex information landscape — in a wrapper of non-contextual reductionism and deterministic knowledge management.  Cynically entertaining, and most disappointing, is the off-hand dismissal of a vital lesson of the Web — that empowered communities, left to their own devices save for moderate guidance, can and will make sense of their environment, their capabilities, and their interests relative to circumstance.  Social production is a reality, and it is marked by constructive decentralization.  Nevertheless, the paper gives us this: “there is too much information available for one person to sift through – especially in a crisis situation – and this can only be adequately addressed with the use of well-trained manpower.” By this logic, only a third-party, dedicated to the task of making sense of aggregated information, is in a position to deliver relevant information to consumers in a timely manner.  Indeed.

The concept seems to represent an excellent model of a research institute, but the centralization and aggregation of dynamic operations-level knowledge can necessarily only be piecemeal.  Similarly, limited manpower cannot be scaled and its capacity for sense-making will quickly be exceeded.  Not surprisingly, since solving the nuisance of complexity is the task at hand, a portal will be the vessel of delivering packaged info.  The icing on the cake, then, is this gem from Microsoft, outlining their contribution to the effort.  There’s nothing like reinforcing that stale desktop-bound Office paradigm in its entirety.  An understanding of the essence of the Web doesn’t even seem to register as an afterthought.

A breath of fresh air, on the other hand, comes from a report that France’s Gendarmerie have moved towards a wholesale adoption of Ubuntu Linux on their workstations.  Despite my personal bias for Ubuntu (which I’m using right now, incidentally), the significance of such a move should strike chords on a number of levels.  For the comptrollers, the €50 million saved on desktop licensing fees should give pause, for the geeks, well, it’s Linux!  But what about this: “Support for open standards is a key part of the Gendarmerie’s emerging IT policy. Standards-based technologies give it more freedom to choose which vendors it adopts and also makes it easier for the Gendarmerie to interoperate with other government networks. It has found that open source software is better at handling open standards.” This cuts to the core of socio-technical self-awareness: Is it better to script the narrative, or understand the language of the conversation?

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Considering openness

Posted in Policy, tagged , , , on 23 January 2009 | Leave a Comment »

It comes as no surprise, considering the rising awareness of open source technology generally, that the new President has requested a review of the possibilities made available to the government by pursuing open source solutions.  The immediate benefits obviously come from decreased acquisitions costs, freedom from proprietary licensing restrictions and vendor lock-in, and a unique aggregation of technical knowledge otherwise unavailable in closed development cycles.  I look forward to reading the upcoming white paper on the matter as it will likely offer particular insight into the stance that the administration will take towards future technology procurement.  That, however, is not the most significant aspect of moving towards broader adoption of open source.  The implications of taking government more generally from closed to open environments — technological, social, managerial — are revolutionary, and a failure to incorporate those lessons into institutional frameworks will be a major discredit to the administration.  Conversely, finding the means throughout the vast corridors of government to translate “openness” into an effective framework for achieving unity of purpose will go far in addressing emergent challenges of the next 4 years, 8 years, and beyond.

Critical in the move towards “open” on a scale beyond technology is the painfully basic yet dangerously nuanced distinction between free and liberated tools that has defined the free software movement.  Thus, the “free, as in beer” v. “free, as in speech” cliche.  Successful open source communities are defined by particular governance structures and relationships that define the direction of the project, despite competing interests that may affect the participants.  Thus, beyond their “product”, such projects are defined by their emergent social governance structures.  In a government context, an “open world” social model points towards the need to learn how to develop such rule sets of participation precisely in response to those circumstances where singular authority (call it “proprietary”) is unavailable, unfeasible, or unaccounted for.

Results, like information, like water, will find a way through, and it cannot be allowed that strategic ends be limited by existing capabilities, processes, and tools.  Learning how to navigate horizontally across the organizational landscape, and in fact preparing for the traversing of agency, department, and organizational boundaries, will have to accompany the new administration’s overtures towards greater openness.

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