Information Sharing
In hindsight, it seems that the U.S. government had enough pieces of intelligence to identify the accused as a potential terrorist. Most alarmingly, on November 19, 2009, the man's father went to the American embassy in Nigeria and told officials there that he was worried that his son had been radicalized by extremists in Yemen.
Those unnamed U.S. embassy officials did not add the son's name to the No Fly List or to a higher level terror watch list - likely because the father did not indicate that his son was planning an imminent attack. The embassy staff did, however, send an unclassified "Visas Viper" cable to the National Counterterrorism Centre, State Department and all U.S. diplomatic missions.
("The Visa Viper program is a State Department initiative created after the World Trade Center Bombing in 1993, when the State Department realized that hundreds of cables discussing terrorists had been initiated, but did not necessarily direct an individual to be watch listed. As a result, the Visa Viper program required Consular Affairs posts and other participating agencies to coordinate the submission of cables providing this specific direction on known or suspected terrorists.")
After the failed attack, it was quickly pointed out that this embassy cable did not provide much detail about the father's background and credibility. But State Department officials defensively responded that much more information was forwarded through other, more secure means.
Eventually, the names of these low-level American embassy bureaucrats working in the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, will be known. They are likely wetting themselves in fear right now or making other career plans or going into hiding. All other American embassy bureaucrats around the world will take note of this experience and the subsequent broad public criticism by the President.
From now on, everything will be shared. Everything must be shared. Nothing should be held back or filtered. Email makes this sharing instantaneous and low-cost. Every day will be a panicked attempt to pass as much information as possible on to Washington and other U.S. diplomatic missions. No embassy official or intelligence analyst wants to be the next bureaucrat to be guilty of "sit[ting] on information that can protect the American people."
The amount of information they send out will increase rapidly, and the amount of alerts they receive (and must carefully review) from other embassies will grow even more.
The amount of information they send out will increase rapidly, and the amount of alerts they receive (and must carefully review) from other embassies will grow even more.
Information Overload
Meanwhile, across town, the New York Times reports that the Military is deluged with information collected from unmanned drones collected over Iraq and Afghanistan. If watched continuously by one person, this collection of video would take 24 years to view. The amount collected is expected to increase rapidly as more drones are added to the fleet and more cameras are added to each to collect video from multiple angles. Currently, "a group of young analysts already watches every second of the footage live as it is streamed...." (ha ha) but that hardly seems like a recipe for careful, skilled analysis.
The problem the Military has sifting through the information gathered by their unmanned drones is similar to the problem faced by the broader intelligence community. A former CIA officer told the Washington Post that there is simply too much information for the analysts to sort through. "Most of it isn't of interest, but people are afraid not to put it in.... And every few minutes you get another piece, that may or may not be relevant to the puzzle you're working on."
But just as President Obama has no patience for embassy officials who fail to share potentially valuable (though possibly meaningless) information, he also publicly scolded those who "failed to connect the dots."
As more information pours in from panicked embassy staff all over the world, the problem of information overload will only get more crippling as the ulcer-inducing risks associated with an incorrect interpretation get higher. Analyzing and interpreting intelligence information is always easy in retrospect, but never simple in real life. Analysts under increased pressure will likely require more and more time to review each piece of information carefully.
I would imagine that there is some hard limit to the amount of information that each analyst can review and meaningfully absorb in any given day of work. With front line workers under pressure to collect and pass on every possible piece of information, and intelligence analysts under pressure to review everything to connect all possible dots, surely the number of employees in the U.S. federal government will have to increase exponentially.
An Efficient and Productive Bureaucracy
On the same day that President Obama was demanding more information sharing and more careful analysis of information by government bureaucrats, he also announced that Nancy Killefer would fill the newly created post of Chief Performance Officer (CPO) to help improve government efficiency. Killefer is a senior partner at the management consulting firm McKinsey, where she helped launch its public sector practice, which works to increase the "effectiveness and efficiency of government institutions."
On the same day that President Obama was demanding more information sharing and more careful analysis of information by government bureaucrats, he also announced that Nancy Killefer would fill the newly created post of Chief Performance Officer (CPO) to help improve government efficiency. Killefer is a senior partner at the management consulting firm McKinsey, where she helped launch its public sector practice, which works to increase the "effectiveness and efficiency of government institutions."
According to BusinessWeek's review of Killefer's McKinsey reports, she will likely focus on the measurement and publication of government agency productivity information. The collection and release of these productivity numbers would then allow Congress to exert more pressure on agencies whose productivity numbers are not increasing.
In addition to focussing on efficiency and productivity, the new CPO will also be in charge of a careful line by line review of the federal budget to combat waste. During the presidential campaign, Obama promised to "thin the ranks of Washington middle managers, freeing up resources both for deficit reduction and for increasing the number of frontline workers."
During difficult economic times, nobody wants to expand the size of government. On the same day that President Obama encouraged bureaucrats to distribute much more information, look at each piece of information far more carefully, and be increasingly more efficient and effective, Governor David Paterson of New York reflected the mood of the times when he announced "We must enact real and lasting cuts to our State’s bureaucracy, merge agencies to improve efficiency and save money, begin the public tracking of agency performance, and develop a long-term strategy for fiscal planning."
There is a general sense in both Canada and the United States that the public sector and government employees have been unfairly shielded from the impact of the economic downturn. The size of the public sector must be shrunk. Public sector pensions must be rolled back. Public sector workers must be made more efficient and their benefits must be drastically reduced.
Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal's response to the recent intelligence failure was to argue that the American intelligence bureaucracy has become too vast, with too many public servants doing overlapping work. To ensure that the intelligence failures are not repeated, the entire intelligence bureaucracy must be cut at once. One can't help but feel real pity for the government workers who will remain.
Public Servants as Human Beings
In August 2008, while she was working at McKinsey, Nancy Killefer wrote a report [pdf] on the recruitment crisis currently faced by the American federal government, which is being gutted by a wave of retirements. She argued that government should try to make a more compelling case for young people considering a career in the public sector, focussing on job security, attractive pensions and benefits, and flexible work arrangements.
Although nobody wants to increase the size of government, it may possibly be that some of those older retiring workers were doing valuable work that might need to continue. So how can the government make a compelling case to young graduates considering a career in the public service and mid-career public servants considering getting out?
Public servants involved in the American government's national security and intelligence apparatus must be experiencing increasing and unrelenting job pressure. At the same time, they are likely becoming more and more concerned about job security, retirement savings, benefits, and work-related stress. In addition, public servants are open to rigorous public scrutiny in ways that their private sector counterparts have never been, and they earn substantially less money at the same time. All of this makes careers in the public service a difficult sell.
Those public servants who work outside of the intelligence community deal with these issues too, but probably in a milder way. And I imagine (based purely on size) that the Canadian public sector is less stressful than the American one. However, on Saturday, Bill Wilkerson, founder of Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Mental Health, announced that depression among Canada’s public servants is "the country’s biggest public health crisis," with staff reporting serious stress, burnout, depression and work overload. According to Wilkerson, the public service is “the most transient, fluid, unsettling work environment on the planet, so why wouldn’t people be anxious and in distress? They are human beings.”
More tragically, he notes that depressed workers are bad for workplace productivity and efficiency.
And really, isn't that what's important here?
During difficult economic times, nobody wants to expand the size of government. On the same day that President Obama encouraged bureaucrats to distribute much more information, look at each piece of information far more carefully, and be increasingly more efficient and effective, Governor David Paterson of New York reflected the mood of the times when he announced "We must enact real and lasting cuts to our State’s bureaucracy, merge agencies to improve efficiency and save money, begin the public tracking of agency performance, and develop a long-term strategy for fiscal planning."
There is a general sense in both Canada and the United States that the public sector and government employees have been unfairly shielded from the impact of the economic downturn. The size of the public sector must be shrunk. Public sector pensions must be rolled back. Public sector workers must be made more efficient and their benefits must be drastically reduced.
Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal's response to the recent intelligence failure was to argue that the American intelligence bureaucracy has become too vast, with too many public servants doing overlapping work. To ensure that the intelligence failures are not repeated, the entire intelligence bureaucracy must be cut at once. One can't help but feel real pity for the government workers who will remain.
Public Servants as Human Beings
In August 2008, while she was working at McKinsey, Nancy Killefer wrote a report [pdf] on the recruitment crisis currently faced by the American federal government, which is being gutted by a wave of retirements. She argued that government should try to make a more compelling case for young people considering a career in the public sector, focussing on job security, attractive pensions and benefits, and flexible work arrangements.
Although nobody wants to increase the size of government, it may possibly be that some of those older retiring workers were doing valuable work that might need to continue. So how can the government make a compelling case to young graduates considering a career in the public service and mid-career public servants considering getting out?
Public servants involved in the American government's national security and intelligence apparatus must be experiencing increasing and unrelenting job pressure. At the same time, they are likely becoming more and more concerned about job security, retirement savings, benefits, and work-related stress. In addition, public servants are open to rigorous public scrutiny in ways that their private sector counterparts have never been, and they earn substantially less money at the same time. All of this makes careers in the public service a difficult sell.
Those public servants who work outside of the intelligence community deal with these issues too, but probably in a milder way. And I imagine (based purely on size) that the Canadian public sector is less stressful than the American one. However, on Saturday, Bill Wilkerson, founder of Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Mental Health, announced that depression among Canada’s public servants is "the country’s biggest public health crisis," with staff reporting serious stress, burnout, depression and work overload. According to Wilkerson, the public service is “the most transient, fluid, unsettling work environment on the planet, so why wouldn’t people be anxious and in distress? They are human beings.”
More tragically, he notes that depressed workers are bad for workplace productivity and efficiency.
And really, isn't that what's important here?
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