TJP

Failure to Connect the Dots: Lack of Capacity

By Byron A. Ellis – January 06, 2010

As long as the U.S. government continues to use disjointed databases, its ability to “connect the dots” will be impaired. Database systems associated with government agencies are, for most part, unable to communicate across agencies, and even within agencies.

The problem is not technical; it is administrative. The government lacks the vision and managerial capacity to rethink and streamline its operating procedures. However, it needs implement a single well-maintained database system accessible to all intelligence and security agencies.

A tailored enterprise resource (ERP) system would enable integration of intelligence and security processes across agencies and locations. It could integrate many sets of data, such financial, distribution, logistics, quality control, human resources, and other modules that enable real-time access to relevant national security information across governmental agencies, languages, and locations.

In the 1990’s private organizations began to implement integrated applications for measuring individual and organizational performance, preventing internal theft, enforcing laws and workplace rules, and integrating production, inventory control, scheduling, purchasing, and cost accounting. The government with more resources and greater security responsibility should do no less.

EPR systems support best practices, such as Business Process Redesign (BPR) across several core business functions. BPR is a pre-planning stage for ERP, a key “mapping” concept for aligning business strategies with information technology. The mapping concept would evaluate value-added and non-value added agency functions, involving “As-Is Analysis,” “To-Be Flows,” “Gap Analysis,” and prototype development and demonstrations.

The government could use the application to collect security data by country and routines could be designed to flag repetitive data, such as names, places, and so on, and send alarms, as well as flagging data inputted as high priority. It should also have the ability to issue reports indicating troublesome individuals, trends and other pertinent information.

The U.S. should not continue to demonstrate blatant lack of capacity to adversaries. Thus, it should immediately evaluate commercial ERP application and set a deadline for replacing obsolete stand-alone systems that are unable to effectively disseminate information to all agencies.

Lastly, it should seriously reassess the capacity of agencies responsible of gathering intelligence and maintaining the nation’s security. We could have paid dearly for the Christmas failure to “connect the dots.”

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