Some want to reduce output by stopping or reducing what the Federal Government pays out as goods, services, benefits, entitlements, etc. to the public.  Some want to increase input by raising revenues coming into the government through taxes, fees, etc.

The above decisions on what the Federal Government produces (case 1 above) and how it is funded (case 2 above) is based on values, feelings, and beliefs, and the resulting politics and policies of government to balance capitalism and the commons, and the support for  independence, dependence, and interdependence across the public.  Elections and the resultant politicians decide on cases 1 and 2.  This is too ambiguous for rapid and long term deficit reduction.

This leaves case 3, improve operations of all Federally funded activities producing anything for anyone.

Laws are in place to enable and fund much of this Federal givernment improvement, with the responsibility for improving the operations of the Executive Branch assigned to the Management element of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  Not the Budget element, the Management element.  The Budget element of OMB is responsible for changing Executive Branch operations, structure, and resources to adjust to political decisions in cases 1 and 2.  The Management element of OMB is responsible for improving Executive Branch efficiency and effectiveness without regard to the politics of its inputs and outputs.

So, to reduce the Federal Deficit without regard to politics, improve the Management of the Executive Branch.

How to do this is my next topic.

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I’ll provide my rationale for this assessment in subsequent posts.

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I have worked for the Federal Government for 35 year, 10 years as an Army Officer, 10 Years in Civil Service, and 15 years as a government management consultant.  I have worked as a manager or analyst in all of these roles.

From my experience, I submit that the authority (by law) and ability (by regulation) to quickly and simply reduce the cost of the US Federal Executive Branch’s (FEB) annual operations and development of new capabilities by more than 50% annually, while increasing the quality and timeliness of its performance, is already present in the FEB.

* Note that “resolving complexity and diversity in science and society into a system of controlled order” is the definition of “management” from the 1963 “Encyclopedia of Management” (Heyel, Editor).  Or more simply – “management is the activity of continuously resolving natural disorder into intended order”.

* Also note that a useful definition for “enterprise” is: “an endeavor, such as an organization, and the collection of its value-chain participants or stakeholders”.  These value-chain participants are typically customers, suppliers, authorities, subordinates, outsources/partners, and the public.  So an enterprise is an endeavor within its broader context or situation.

* Another term relevant to this suggestion is the term “architecture”, which is: “the parts of a subject, the parts’ relationships to each other, and the attributes of the parts and relationships”  The parts are the “nouns” about a subject, the relationships are “verbs” about the subject’s parts, and the attributes are adjectives for nouns and adverbs for verbs.

* So, an “enterprise architecture” is “the parts, part relationships, and part and relationship attributes about an endeavor and its value-chain participants or stakeholders.”

* An “enterprise architecture” is the primary mechanism of “enterprise management”, because it identifies and keeps track of all of the current and intended parts of an enterprise, their relationships/configuration, and their attributes/details.

But the primary resource of the US Nation as an enterprise, under the responsibility of the US FEB and an enterprise, is not being effectively, efficiently, or responsively “managed”.  That primary resource is “Information”, and the FEB has specific responsibilities for Federal Information Resource Management (IRM) under the 1980 and 1995 Paperwork Reduction Acts (PRA).

The FEB also has responsibilities for using that information resource to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, security, productivity, capability, and performance of the FEB and the Nation (e.g., Internal Controls, Government Performance and Results Acts, Government Paperwork Elimination Act, Clinger-Cohen Act).

But if the information resource is not collected, organized, shared, maintained, or managed, then the benefits of the huge investments in creating that information (e.g. research, development, collection, analysis) are wasted – there is no true “management” of any endeavor within its broader enterprise without management of the full enterprise’s information.  Without IRM, there is no enterprise management – there is “enterprise muddle”.

Within the FEB, there is no collected inventory of the ever-present and evolving “disordered” information, nor is there an adaptive intended “ordered” collection of information, nor is there a comprehensive, cohesive, coherent, and consistent method of “resolving” information disorder into information order.  So the US FEB costs two to three times more per year to develop its capabilities and operate them than it should, for what it produces as goods, services, information products, benefits, entitlements, and other outputs and outcomes.

A primary mechanism to reduce the annual cost of the FEB and improve its quality and responsiveness, is to immediately and strongly enforce the IRM instructions in OMB Circulars A-123 (Federal Managers’ Responsibility for Internal Controls) and OMB Circulars A-130 (Management of Federal Information Resources).  Neither of these Circulars is broadly applied nor enforced in the FEB, from the White House downward, nor out to those organizations outside the FEB who receive Federal funding.

Responsible parties within the White House EOP have not established the necessary guidance and assessment criteria for effective and efficient IRM. Thus, there is no path by which the FEB may become a most effective and efficient organization (MEEO).  The primary operational component of the IRM mechanism is now called the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), evolving since 1998 from the US CIO Council and then, since 2002, the OMB FEA Program Management Office.  Unfortunately, the original FEA guidance, and the newly evolving guidance, do not provide a mechanism for IRM for FEB missions, only for tying IT investment management to the FEB missions.  To be specific, the FEB is providing guidance on how to buy and control information technology, not on how to manage the FEB and thus Nation’s public-domain Information Resources.

To achieve MEEO for the FEB, through strong FEB IRM that benefits the Government and the Nation, the FEB needs to include the following IRM parts in integrated updates to its Circular A-123, Circular A-130, and OMB FEA Guidance:

1. Within six months, build and deploy a FEB-wide standard process for IRM by applying terminology management techniques in the sequence below.  FEB management depends on FEB IRM, and FEB IRM depends on FEB terminology management.

* Continuously discover and identify all FEB organization and FEB-relevant information content stores (structured, semi-structured, and unstructured).  This would be performed with appropriate security and privacy constraints increasingly supported by the FEA mechanism, which can increasingly provide role-based access control (RBAC), and attribute-based access control (ABAC) knowledge to enable key to lock control over who, with a RBAC/ABAC key, can see and do what with resources having a RBAC/ABAC lock.

* Continuously index all content stores

* Extract out the terms of each content item (e.g., the data in a form’s fields, a form’s design, a document, the properties of the document, a diagram, the properties of the diagram, a database row, the database’s design, an email, the properties of the email)

* Identify each term as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb within the content’s structure (e.g., a noun within a sentence phrase)

* Build a “Term Inventory” in a single distributed/virtual repository for the FEB enterprise, uniquely identifying each term with a “universally-unique ID” (UUID) (a standard IT method)

* Identify within a single FEB distributed/virtual repository, the direct associations between terms (e.g., noun-verb-noun, subject-predicate_verb_predicate-object, table-column-row, class-attribute-instance)

* Build a FEB “Term Dictionary” for the Feb enterprise, enabling capture of all definitions used for a term, and their sources.

* Build a FEB “Concept Inventory” by linking models of “direct associations” within content (e.g.,within a phrase or clause) out to the broader-context (e.g., a sentence, paragraph,section, document, folder, library)

** Define, at all levels of endeavor, all FEB “concepts of operations” or CONOPS models (e.g., using simple concept mapping tools)

** Define subsequent endeavor “process models” (using process modeling standards, tools, and a single distributedFEB process model repository)

** Define subsequent “product models” within the process models and process repository

** Define subsequent “product metadata models” within the process repository (i.e., product descriptive information) as standard conceptual data models – CDM, logical data models – LDM, physical data models – PDM, and during later database and software design, physical database schema – DBSchema.

** Define subsequent “process metadata models” within the process repository (i.e., as CDM, LDM, and PDM of process, and later, the DBSchema of databases and software)

** Define subsequent “knowledge models” (as ‘ontologies” or “architecture metamodels” within a single “distributed” FEB knowledge/architecture/ontology repository

** Implement “knowledge-bases” from ontologies, or the equivalent “architectures” from architecture metamodels

** Define subsequent “value-chains” (and thus the collective “value-lattice”) of the endeavor (as “axiologies”)

** Implement “value-chain processes” as the broader “enterprise” of the endeavor.

* Build a FEB “Taxonomy” of terms categorized into broader to narrower meaning (i.e., a class hierarchy having attribute inheritance), as a “controlled vocabulary” for the FEB endeavor and broader FEB enterprise

* Build a FEB “Thesaurus” of terms, displayed using the Taxonomy, showing synonyms (e.g., equivalent, acronym, alias, misspellings, variant spellings) and variants, as the mechanism for jargon and language translation across elements of the FEB enterprise, and identifying preferred FEB terms for vocabulary standardization.

2. Within one year of defining the above IRM process, implement it across all operating activities funded by the FEB.

3. Annually validate compliance with Circular A-123, Circular A-130, and OMB FEA/IRM before issuing each Agency’s budget.

The emphasis on having a single FEB repository in the process above, and its physical and virtual distribution, is because the current approach of letting each FEB activity operate with autonomy in its management of its portion of Federal and National information resources, has led to the current crisis in government costs, effectiveness, and responsiveness, and has directly contributed to the government’s past, current, and imminent economic, social, and defense challenges.

 

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I’ve seen many descriptions of management, and many definitions of a particular type of management (e.g., financial management), but no clear definitions of management itself.

In the late 1960′s, while in high school, I was doing research on managing a business, and I asked my teacher a simple question.  “What is management?”  I received a vague description that confused me, so I looked it up in several dictionaries, encyclopedias, business periodicals, etc., at my school and nearby university library.  No definitions of management, just descriptions.

So I asked the librarian for help, and she pointed out the 1963 “Encyclopedia of Management”.  I looked in it, but still found no specific defintion, but I did find a clause in a sentence that I took as a definition, and I have used that paraphrased clause as the definition of management since then.

A. Management is “…. is the resolution of complexity and diversity in science and society into a system of controlled order.”  I’ve elaborated on this definition quite a bit since then, as shown below.

B.  Management is the dynamic resolution of the evolving complexity and diversity of science, society, and perception into an adaptive system of controlled order.

C. Management is the continuous action of changing disorder to order.

D. Management is turning chaos into order.

I have elaborated more on this topic at  http://one-world-is.org/2008/02/24/management-definitions/.

If an internal Management Consultant or external/contracted Management Consulting firm provides services for their clients, then what is the definition of “Management Consulting”, and does it matter?

A definition of Consulting is:  “providing specialist advice: providing specialist advice to other people who work in the same field” (Encarta Online Dictionary).

So a Management Consultant provides specialized advice to Managers.  So we help Government Managers turn their chaos into order by giving the specialized advise on how to do just that, and we may also provide them management support in the subsequent operations to do it.  That means we help them:
◦identify and array the chaotic things,
◦offer advise on possible orderly states,
◦identify the changes that need to take place to achieve the selected orderly state,
◦perhaps help them in implementing the changes, and
◦perhaps adjusting all the above as the situation changes.

This sequence of activities is also known as:
◦Identify the As-Is (Current) Situation
◦Identify the To-Be (Intended Future, Target) State
◦Identify the Deficiencies, Overlaps, Gaps, and Shortcomings (DOGS) between the Current and Target state
◦Plan how to overcome (resolve) the DOGS
◦Implement the Plans
◦Monitor and Adjust the above as needed.

This is also what Enterprise Architects help Leaders and Managers do for their organization.  Further, an EA provides a coherent, cohesive, and congruent knowledge repository, with a record of the diverse and consistent parts of the enterprise, and a  transformation/change process.

The definitions of Managment and Consultant matters, because we are contracted to help our manager-clients reduce their day-to-day, and often long-lived, chaos into some form order, whether the shape of that order is known from the beginning of the SOW creation or not.

The client may specify the results they want in advance, but will typically change the expected results as the “resolution of chaos into order” progresses.  This is the basis of classic scope creep between the original SOW and what the client comes to expect over the life of the contract.

But then we must also “manage” that scope creep, by identifying the evolving complex and diverse expectations of the client (and their staff) and bringing those expectations into an approved new order, through a modification to the SOW.

So it’s management within management within management, “to infinity and beyond”!  Any lapse in management leads to more evolving disorder.  Sounds like a good justification to hire some good Management Consultants, as employees or contractors, for all of the client’s evolving complexity and diversity, and to keep management and management consulting going “to infinity and beyond”!

 

Original OWIS Content:

• Original OWIS Public Information
• Simplified Approach to General Endeavor Management and Enterprise Management Architecture

OWIS Membership Areas:

• One
• One World
• One World Information
• One World Information System
• GEM-EMA Practioner Zone

 

• Revolutionize human interactions, database applications, online services, communication, and the operations and management of all organizations, communities, groups, and individuals.
• Enable knowledge-workers to securely and profitably organize, share, and unify their distinct knowledge and viewpoints into a common globally-networked knowledge pool.

RATIONALE: A unified knowledge capability, beyond that of current global “Semantic Web” efforts, will support knowledge-sharing and provide new and current operations with analysis, planning, decision-making, and performance management with situationally-relevant historical and current knowledge from public networks and any available privately-accessible networks.

FINANCIAL: The key financial objectives are to:

1. OWIS completes a web-capable operational prototype CASS software product in three months for $100,000, using our solution architecture, system design, and open-source technology.
2. Subsequently, OWIS completes a web-capable and secure pilot CASS software product for a reference client organization in three months for $150,000, using open-source technology.
3. Subsequently, OWIS completes a web-capable and secure commercial CASS software product in three months for $200,000 using mostly open-source technology.
4. OWIS establishes CASS capability branding and a CASS service capability sufficient for 10,000 online users over six months, in parallel with the software pilot and final software development, for $250,000.
5. OWIS achieves sales of 5,000 CASS full-user accounts in three months, at $25.00 per account.
6. OWIS achieves sales of 5,000 CASS full-user accounts per month thereafter, with an increase in service capacity sufficient to have capacity for 5,000 accounts for rapid growth needs.
7. OWIS provides those individuals who cannot afford the full-user account fees with free basic accounts after 20,000 paid user accounts are sold, using donated funds and other non-profit revenues to cover the free account costs.

STATUS: CASS capability analysis and design over the past several years, and recent advances in semantic technology and market awareness of knowledge-management, position this CASS opportunity to be appealing for early innovators and those seeking dramatic, yet managed, change.

ACTION: Willing individuals provide OWIS with annual donations of $10, informal groups and communities with $100, small organizations with $250, medium-sized organizations with $1000, and large organizations with $5000, or anyone provide one or more grants to fund the sequence of CASS capability development and deployment described above, whole or in-part. Make Donations at http://www.one-world-is.org/paypal/paypal-contribute1.htm. Contact grants@one-world-is.org to discuss Grant offers. Verifiably pass this proposal to 10 other people to win a no-cost CASS full-user account when CASS is operational.

Roy Roebuck, +1 (703) 598-2351, roy@one-world-is.org, 06/16/2009.

 

I now see that all of my management and technology efforts, and my physical science, social science, management, and technology education are all about helping people, as individuals, in groups, in organizations, or in combinations of these, to communicate more effectively and efficiently, and thus to be able to cooperate, and interoperate, with greater ease.

To facilitate that, I’ve developed the following mission and goals:

Mission:
Establish endeavor networked knowledge organization system (ENKOS) for Concurrent Management of:

• Operations Life Cycle for Appropriate Operational Transparency, Accountability, and Discipline;
• Performance;
• Security Architecture;
• Enterprise Architectures;
• Green Scorecard Efforts for Federal Agency Executives.

Goals:

1. Implement ENKOS for System/Program Architectures
2. Implement ENKOS for Business Function/Portfolio/Segment Architectures
3. Implement ENKOS for Government, Commercial, and Non-Profit Organizations’ Enterprise IT Architectures
4. Implement ENKOS for Organization Concurrent Knowledge-based Operations
5. Implement ENKOS for Value-Chain Concurrent Knowledge-based Operations

For 33 years I have worked from a “whole enterprise” perspective of management science, information science, social science, physical science, and technology. See http://gem-ema.one-world-is.org/.

I focus on solutions for the unmet needs of organizations, groups, and individuals. In doing this, I apply science and technology to social needs, building innovative and original enterprise management (EM) capabilities using enterprise management architecture (EMA) built using terminology management techiques.

The Terminology-driven EMA enables progressively automated interoperability across the meaning, intention, data, process, and service levels, supporting all aspects of IT integration, interoperability, unification, and unified-view federated operations.A socio-technical focus enables me to operate “out of the box”.

My non-profit management-education and research organization enables organizations and groups of organizations, and the individuals and teams within them, to gain new capabilities in secure and shared situational awareness and distributed co-operation.

My organization is currently running in the “seed money” and “startup” phases, and is seeking donations, grants, and contracts to pursue the above goals in supporting individuals, groups, and government, commercial, and non-profit organizations.

Services: Terminology Development and Management (TDM) to build ENKOS with integrated:

• dictionary,
• concept models: Concept maps, DLG/triples, CONOPS, OV2/etc., conceptual data model, logical data model (ERD), Domain Ontologies and KB (e.g., Architecture), Unifying Ontology and KB (e.g., Enterprise Management Architecture – EMA), Axiology and Value-Chains (EMA)
• taxonomy
• thesaurus (i.e., jargon and language translators)

 

My Ideas:
http://tinyurl.com/ctgr6d

Ideas I’ve Commented On:
A terminology can serve as the metho … In response to “Systems to gather data.“
While I fully concur with Master Dat … In response to “Create a Master Data Management schema for use by govt. agencies“
I’ve observed that you can iden … In response to “Government integrity?“
I agree with the intent of this idea … In response to “Standard Business Glossary“
Visualizing data must be based on un … In response to “Use a RIA tool like Flex or Silverlight for Interactive Data Visualization“
I agree with this idea. Because this … In response to “ONLINE BUSINESS PLAN AND DUE DILIGENCE REPORTING SYSTEM AND DATA STORAGE“
This solution need semantics first, … In response to “ARRA(Recovery) Decision Support System“
I fully concur with TPaydos and OAmb … In response to “Implement a “Trusted Information” Strategy“
What does the data (i.e. metadata an … In response to “First, make the data available in raw form“
I agree that a means of reconciling … In response to “what’s the business case for recovery.gov“
I agree with your idea. I have … In response to “Common data taxonomy“
See http://www.eaft-aet.net/en/decla … In response to “Establish A National Terminology As A Shared Reference“
I agree. A way of making all o … In response to “subject“
This idea is assuming that a technol … In response to “Make public data available to the public with web services“
An ERP, like an EA, covers only a po … In response to “Provide Enterprise Resource Planning Solutions to Local Agencies“
I full concur with Mills’ idea.&nbsp … In response to “Make collecting recovery data agile using semantic web technology“
Communication takes place when an in … In response to “Communication is Key“
A semantic wiki is a great way to ge … In response to “Web 3.0 — A Free Wiki for Executable English“
Once you’ve built a group’s terminol … In response to “Establish A National Terminology As A Shared Reference“
See further elaboration in the idea … In response to “Establish A National Terminology As A Shared Reference“
This assumes the databases have been … In response to “Leverage existing Database“
Here’s a proposal, for government, c … In response to “Establish A National Terminology As A Shared Reference“
Change my above comment to “no one s … In response to “Create a Master Data Management schema for use by govt. agencies“
The “thesaurus” of a terminolog … In response to “8th Grade Basal Reading Level of Data Aggregation in Visual form“
An ARRA terminology, developed to th … In response to “Information & Data Security“
While I like the idea, the implement … In response to “Leverage commercial vitrualization solutions“
At the foundation of the need cited … In response to “Adapt successful federal data exchange programs to ARRA recipient reporting“
I always think of access-security as … In response to “Comprehensive Security Approach“
StratML would provide a consistent t … In response to “Strategy Markup Language“
This diagram illustrates the major c … In response to “Terms, Terminology, Existing Government Controls, Management Life Cycle“
My previous comment does not show th … In response to “Terms, Terminology, Existing Government Controls, Management Life Cycle“
I fully concur with this idea. … In response to “Semantic data integration and automated analysis for governme organizations“
The faceted categorization of a topi … In response to “Terms, Terminology, Existing Government Controls, Management Life Cycle“
This idea reinforces the need for se … In response to “Data Mantates should focus on the WHAT’s not HOW’s“
Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a&n … In response to “Using balanced scorecards for performance-based analytics“
Treemaps are great technology. So, h … In response to “Treemap for exploration of spending“
I strongly agree with the posted ide … In response to “Implement a “Trusted Information” Strategy“
I strongly concur with this idea.&nb … In response to “Strategy Markup Language“
Terminology can be described as: “a … In response to “Establish A National Terminology As A Shared Reference“
Here are some examples of other nati … In response to “Establish A National Terminology As A Shared Reference“
Putting Legislative Bills into an XM … In response to “XML for Bills“
I agree. The process of determ … In response to “First, find out what folks want to know by interest group.“
Getting to ARRA XML syntax woul … In response to “Data Reporting based on the XML and Web Services standards.“
I agree on the need, and on a durati … In response to “Data preservation “
The audit trail needs to be part of … In response to “audit trail“
I agree with the idea. I would … In response to “Open Data Will Enable Democratized Analysis and Accountability“
I agree that GIS is great, and ESRI … In response to “Add Mapping and Geographic Analysis to Recovery.gov“
Once you’ve built a group’s terminol … In response to “Communication is Key“
While the above analytical approach … In response to “Palantir: Technology to Empower people to Investigate and Prevent Fraud“
I fully agree. Underneath this … In response to “Citizen Usability and “Being Meaningful”“
To get to non-obvious relationships, … In response to “Simple Way To ReduceFraud — Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness“
I partially agree. There seems … In response to “Standards Always Win: An Enterprise Architecture Pattern for Transparency“
Semantic technology (commercial and … In response to “Standard Business Glossary“