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The Federal Information Plan for Cost Effective Government: Position of The Balanced Party by Orion Karl Daley 
The Transparent and Accountable Government no matter at what scale is the most effective means of serving the people. The image of what was called 'Big' government comes from the Ronald Reagan days. Allot of what President Reagan is admirable, but his move to produce a 'Trickle Down Economy' favored the belief, than free enterprise could regulate itself based on market demand, and therefore is self regulating. In spirit, this appears efficient, but free enterprise also is responsible for creating its markets , and is effective in creating demand. When dealing with a challenging economy, market demand can be created in terms of dependencies. The whole idea was ostensibly to reduce 'Big Government' which in many aspects represents both a cost ineffective convoluted bureaucracy, and an imposition in our daily lives. Reagan thought to improve this part of the image by lowering taxes. This got the approval of many, but this misfired later in George Bush Sr's follow up stay in office with his 'Read My Libs, I will not raise taxes'. For a government that is supposed to serve the people, like any service, it can be easier to provide diminishing returns when led by incompetent management . This is then compounded by the growing complexity of our social structure that is then left to Capitalism at its worst to take advantage of. Since 2000, with the trickle down message, 'let them eat cake', it becomes easier and easier to defer on true regard, and responsibility by those responsible for upholding standards for our nation. With our cake, we are also told to lower our expectations and standards which requires us to ultimately devalue our own sense of self esteem. In other words, why are we told in media that we must have such a low value of life ? It then becomes even easier then to offer only diminishing returns by our leadership and those who they serve. Power that is not managed becomes unfettered and ungoverned power.
This model can work until it is squeezed to death where it then topples over. In our history, Herbert Hoover represented this type of incompetance with his lop sided economy that caused the stock market to crash in 1929, and with his absolute disregard for the people. Like the current administrations model, it runs on inefficiency until it breaks like the savings and loan banks that George Jr. was into. Instead its now on a National Scale with international repercussions. The Cost Effective Government The only means of social welfare in our nation is first through Government Reform, which will require in its evolution, Corporate reform where the management of power can only be accomplished through Transparency and Accountability in Government. It is the over all leadership in government that must steward accountability in order to steward the accountability, and therefore the leadership in others of any representation and/or following. Accountability in government stewards accountability of the people it represents. John F. Kennedy told the nation "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". For me, this goes firstly for the representatives of the people, if it is to be expected of the people. To establish a transparent and accountable administration that works with both the House and the Senate, then the House and Senate are obliged to do the same. Hence efficiency and cost effective government can be achieved where policy and legislative action can take on measurable significance for the benefit of the people. Government Efficiency and Effectivness: A government that can serve the people responsibly is a cost effective government. A cost effective government is one that manages its information properly within a branch and between branches its many departments. One of the most important parts of the our government is in the management of information. This is not intended to suggest abuse, loss of a citizens privacy, or that we all have some hidden DNA profile with the government, but that the information systems themselves are fundamentally obsolete and not effective. There are salient examples of this inefficiency. To cite a few, there are government departments that have separate computing systems that require manual processes between them; or the loss of a Vet's records by Walter Reed Army hospital; and how FEMA was not able to communicate to 'Home Land Security' adequately about hurricane Katrina rescue needs; and in general, inter-intra communication of information in government departments. There has been plausible deniability in government, where Accountability and Transparency are considered to be paramount. Examples are the failures of Intelligence that led up to 9/11, Abu Grab Prison abuse, and the lack of Armor in Iraq, etc. To put this in further perspective, the question should be posed that if 9/11 could have been avoided, or minimized if our government was not compromised by inefficient information management. Simply, could the war in Iraq been avoided if not postponed ? In all cases it is not a proactive but reactive damage control response that the government is limited to when having dysfunctional information management. More over, 'waste, fraud and abuse' of taxpayer money is typically an after fact intensive cost based process of discovery. Collateral costs to the tax payer such as in oversights like in the Katrina disaster, and any required oversight/discovery and investigative process about the government itself is considered unneeded costs where through functional information management can be avoided. What is prevalent in all the above examples, without minimizing the extensive risks in National Security itself, is the lack of definition of, and ubiquitous implementation of information sharing and its roles based management. Our information age will work against us if not accounting for its escalating scope and complexity of needs, and diminishing bandwidth to determine what is relevant in the burgeoning volume of information in use for managing the government. Until a cost effective information system plan is in place, government employees are limited in the ability to do their jobs which for its stated purpose is to serve the people. To save costs, and in the name of 'Big government' we can look at slashing needed programs that instead could be looked at as strategic investments like education, health research etc, or instead, we can improve the government's fundamental operation. With out a top down federal information systems plan, there is no way to fix a broken and dysfunctional information system, where the government as a result operates at a much higher or inflated cost to the tax payer than is needed. It is within reason to estimate that 65% of the cost of administrative over head can be reduced; in other words, to operate the government at a cost of only 35% of what it use to be just by the improvement of its information management. The sharing of Intelligence, the protection, and privacy of, or the lack of, and the confusion of what information, its quality and accuracy, rights of use, potential misuse, its purpose in serving efficiency, and effectiveness in managing the government and protecting the People all have to be based on a Top Down Federal Information Plan. Federal Information Plan: If elected President in 2008, my commitment as the executive management, is to help steward Congress to address the issues at hand, the functional requirements of government departments, and the criterion of classification, and sharability.
All Federal Information Services will be based on a Ubiquitous Service Architecture that will be able to interconnect for the purposes of serving the people. This will allow additionally the ability to reduce what is perceived as a convoluted non connected bureaucracy to make branches and departments of government work cost effectively within themselves and with each others, and to further leverage Federal Information services to the public. The Federal Information Plan must regard needs, rights, security, cost, and effectiveness, and the strategic map for this, and how to properly manage information in the government for all levels, over all. The following is the straw man Pro forma plan for the information hierarchy for shared opinion and refinement. A-Information Hierarchy Top Down is to be designed on a 'need to know', and 'should know basis', where at the Executive branch, the knowing could be in some instances, such as obtaining facts about solders who are the boots on the ground, Intelligence Releases that have been lost in issue contention, or to verify the completeness of a Presidential Daily Briefing; and to obtain facts when necessary from direct levels of government directly so as to prevent information sanitizing prior to when arriving in other forms to the President's desk.
B-Information Efficiency use and Effectiveness must be made available from the Executive branch for the Houses of Congress, and committee investigations. This sharing is to be considered bi-directional for periodic review of government departments, agencies and services as well as from Congressional members themselves. The Executive Branch, Congress and the Judiciary should all share intended plans and schedules in an open and transparent way. This so actions can be accounted for in a proactive manner as opposed to a cost intensive reactive discovery process. C-The Information Hierarchy Bottom Up - the protection and security of sensitive information must also be maintained such as not to compromise the Nation's Security. Accountability and Transparency in Government is based on the classification of information, and where it can be made available as public to the people, and the private sector based on the absence of sensitive classification, and the 'need to know', and 'should know basis'. D-Interdepartmental Sharing of Information is to be defined by type and purpose of Information as agreed upon by the Executive Branch and Congress. E-Intradepartmental Sharing for information is for the purposes for departmental agents accomplishing their work. The hierarchy of information view within unique departments is also for Congress to review for clarity and purposes of protection and efficiency. F-Information Audit and Security that includes identity and trust management, and the guard against threat and vulnerability , will be an additional plan that is requested to come from Congress.
Orion Karl Daley Balanced Party Presidential Candidate for Election 2008 |