Where are We Today
On 9/11/2001, the whole world became painfully aware of how extremely DISintegrated U.S. government computer systems really are. FBI systems cannot communicate with other FBI systems a few feet away. My wife and I both have pilot’s licenses and we know for certain that FAA computer systems cannot communicate with other FAA systems in the same building. FAA cannot talk to military or National Guard systems. We spend billions of dollars on nearly-useless national security systems that cannot handle the most obvious Information Sharing Use Cases.
The 9/11 Commission Final Report (Dec 17, 2004) documented the ongoing implications of our almost total lack of national computer system integration. One of the most laughable acquisitions is that to this very day, children on a home PC can search the Internet and find worldwide information using multiple Google search words, whereas FBI agents with a critical need-to-know cannot do the same thing with the FBI’s own internal computing systems.
In a feeble attempt to remedy this mission-critical serious system DISintegration catastrophe, the FBI spent four years and $170 on the very-poorly conceived Virtual Case File, before Director Robert Mueller cancelled the entire failed project in April 2005. The FBI STILL cannot do much of what children can do on the Internet today.
Multiple burdensome bureaucracies have been created, like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS - which failed totally to use grossly-mismanaged FEMA to assist with Hurricane Katrina). President Bush’s promises to New Orleans have NOT been fulfilled to this day (and likely will NOT be while he is in office). The PATRIOT Act and unauthorized wire taps pushed the limits of American’s right to privacy. The Director of National Intelligence was created to coordinate Information Sharing. The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) created yet another set of redundant databases, and a new bureaucracy that attempts to improve multiple data access to terrorism-related intelligence. The Information Sharing Environment (ISE) was initiated and managed by political people with no track record of success or previous experience with anything as large as the goals that were over-optimistically assigned to them.
Many other new federal bureaucracies have been created that have been assigned admirable goals. They are generating tons of new papers, but only marginal benefits for the significant public funds that are being expended, SIX YEARS AFTER 9/11/2001. They now have (poorly MISmanaged) “plans” for what needs to be done, but like most government bureaucratic boondoggles, they’ve produced very little that has improved much of anything in our inefficient, DISintegrated, governmental systems and processes.
Until he retired recently, Dick Burk was the appointed Federal Chief Enterprise Architect. His qualifications: Over 30 years in political government offices, HUD, community development, housing rehabilitation, and Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda. Dick barely has a clue about the potential of a computer network, and he still knows almost nothing about Enterprise System Integration. Having a Federal Enterprise Architect is a wonderful idea, but it should be a technically-qualified individual with unique skills and a track record of large-scale enterprise integration successes. This Dick wasted a billion of YOUR dollars, and left us with little more than a questionable “plan.”
If we measure the effectiveness of six years of money and time spent on Federal Enterprise Architecture (attempting to create an effective federal, state, local and tribal “Information Sharing” environment) by the number of sheets of paper still moving around between disconnected processes and systems, we can clearly see that our government is carelessly killing tens of millions of trees and NOT on track to eliminate inefficient unnecessary paperwork in another decade.
Federal Enterprise Architecture is a VERY-DESIRABLE SET OF ADMIRABLE GOALS, but a BUREAUCRATIC BOONDOGGLE, NEARLY TOTAL FAILURE that has made many unqualified, ineffective, subcontractors unjustifiably rich, with extremely-poor cost/benefit ratios for our huge ongoing national investment. (E-Gov Goals: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/a-1-fea.html)
The fact that our federal effort has failed (so far) does NOT mean that Enterprise Architecture is inheritently flawed. It just means that if you appoint an inept, unskilled politician to manage a good set of achievable integration-and-consolidation goals, you should NOT expect success. The problem with corrupted politicians that are clueless about managing aggressive technology efforts is that only 99.9% of them give the rest a bad name. (SMILE)