Two sets of tools are available today that, if executed with the right combination of guts and wisdom, could have a historically significant effect on the DoD IT portfolio and, as a consequence, the DoD warfighting capability in general.
The first set comes from Public Law 108-375, 10USC2222, 10USC186 and the 2005 NDAA - from here on referred to as the "Core" Defense Business Transformation legislation. This Core both specifies and mandates that all decisions made relative to developing, modernizing or enhancing business IT in the DoD must be supported by a specified suite of decision support tools.
The fact that these tools are mandated by a higher authority for use everywhere in the Department of Defense has political value. The fact that these tools, when made to work together as a decision support system, behave almost identical to the investment decision support tools used by city and county governments all over the US is not, in my opinion, an accident.
They have not yet been executed in a way that provides even a fraction of the potential value. Execution is moving in the right direction for the OSD level Investment Review Boards IRB's, but on balance, the IRB's are a fraction of the decision makers in the DoD who are making daily decisions about their IT portfolios. Many DoD decision makers have little decision support other than their action officer staffs and no visibility to what others are doing.
If I were investing in DoD myself, I would consider this set of tools an undervalued asset.
The second set comes from Darwinian advancement in technology and innovation. What the folks over at milTech Solutions might not be quick to reveal is that the milSuite of tools, coupled with Army Knowledge Online (AKO) or a similar ubiquitous backbone, has the power to do much more than merely enable people to socialize. It can enable systems (and their associated data) to socialize - without the need for months of RICE object development and costly interfaces. Another undervalued asset.
Either one of these tool sets could put billions back into circulation, but not without a good trainer and champions. The tectonic shift that either would cause in the DoD would affect nearly everyone. Anyone reading this who has been around DoD long enough understands what I am not saying.
Showing posts with label Business Transformation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business Transformation. Show all posts
Thursday, January 27, 2011
DoD Budget Cuts
To cut or not to cut...
Where to cut...
This discussion is on main US stage right now. It made it into the State of the Union address last night. Yet, this is an over simplification of the real questions we should be asking. It ignores what Transformation is all about.
If someone decides that they need to lose weight, the simplest and most expeditious way is to lop off an arm or a leg. Doing so will ensure that a person will lose weight fast, but treating a weight problem with this kind of solution causes collateral damage and it ignores the fact that, baring legitimate medical pathology, poor decision making is a root cause. Every time a person reaches for fast food, junk food, eats more than they need to, or decides not to exercise, a little more fat is the result.
The DoD is great at making tactical and strategic combat related decisions. One could argue that the US DoD is the best in the world at this. It is also terrible at making business investment decisions. Poor decisions collected over the years have put a lot of "fat" on this beast & it is causing the DoD to be operating in poor health. Vital resources that should be flowing to needed operations are plugged up in redundant investments, un-needed investments, poorly executed investments, under-executed investments, etc.
One look at the numbers submitted as a "business case" for these investments would reveal just how healthy DoD business investment decision making is. A look at the supporting documents and information (missing or wildly incomplete solutions architecture, self-certifying compliance letters, undefined milestones, recycled arguments, etc) being used to inform decision makers would reveal the quality of DoD due diligence. And a look at the actions produced by our decision making system in terms of redundancies allowed to continue, follow up (or not), course corrections (or not), accountability (or not), and management of the Department bottom line would reveal the overall quality and effect of the decisions the DoD's current decision making system is producing.
There is another way to lose weight. A way to make cuts without so much collateral damage. Change our habits. Make sure our decision making "food" is grown with care and in good shape by setting (and checking) the standard for business cases and supporting documents. Consume good information instead of information "fast food." Exercise our decision making powers by forcing course corrections, remembering where we were yesterday, and setting (and sticking to) a strategy for where we will be tomorrow.
Core legislation (Public Law 108-375, 10USC2222, 10USC186, and the 2005 NDAA) gave the DoD the tools it needs to get healthy. The Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA), the Enterprise Transition Plan (ETP), an Investment Review (Due Diligence) process and governing bodies, an Annual Review and even threw in a way to get and keep the DoD on the path to better health - the ADA.
What are your thoughts about losing weight in the DoD?
Where to cut...
This discussion is on main US stage right now. It made it into the State of the Union address last night. Yet, this is an over simplification of the real questions we should be asking. It ignores what Transformation is all about.
If someone decides that they need to lose weight, the simplest and most expeditious way is to lop off an arm or a leg. Doing so will ensure that a person will lose weight fast, but treating a weight problem with this kind of solution causes collateral damage and it ignores the fact that, baring legitimate medical pathology, poor decision making is a root cause. Every time a person reaches for fast food, junk food, eats more than they need to, or decides not to exercise, a little more fat is the result.
The DoD is great at making tactical and strategic combat related decisions. One could argue that the US DoD is the best in the world at this. It is also terrible at making business investment decisions. Poor decisions collected over the years have put a lot of "fat" on this beast & it is causing the DoD to be operating in poor health. Vital resources that should be flowing to needed operations are plugged up in redundant investments, un-needed investments, poorly executed investments, under-executed investments, etc.
One look at the numbers submitted as a "business case" for these investments would reveal just how healthy DoD business investment decision making is. A look at the supporting documents and information (missing or wildly incomplete solutions architecture, self-certifying compliance letters, undefined milestones, recycled arguments, etc) being used to inform decision makers would reveal the quality of DoD due diligence. And a look at the actions produced by our decision making system in terms of redundancies allowed to continue, follow up (or not), course corrections (or not), accountability (or not), and management of the Department bottom line would reveal the overall quality and effect of the decisions the DoD's current decision making system is producing.
There is another way to lose weight. A way to make cuts without so much collateral damage. Change our habits. Make sure our decision making "food" is grown with care and in good shape by setting (and checking) the standard for business cases and supporting documents. Consume good information instead of information "fast food." Exercise our decision making powers by forcing course corrections, remembering where we were yesterday, and setting (and sticking to) a strategy for where we will be tomorrow.
Core legislation (Public Law 108-375, 10USC2222, 10USC186, and the 2005 NDAA) gave the DoD the tools it needs to get healthy. The Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA), the Enterprise Transition Plan (ETP), an Investment Review (Due Diligence) process and governing bodies, an Annual Review and even threw in a way to get and keep the DoD on the path to better health - the ADA.
What are your thoughts about losing weight in the DoD?
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Simple Sabotage - We Wrote the Book
On 17 January 1944, the Office of Strategic Services published a book titled "Simple Sabotage Field Manual." You can find this book for Kindle on Amazon.com for about $5, or you can download a free version by clicking this link to www.Gutenberg.org.
Warning text on page one states:
Later the book describes two forms of sabotage. The first form requires "... planning and the use of specially trained operatives." The second form "...the ordinary individual citizen-saboteur can perform." It's the second form which caught my attention.
To be clear, this "...type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly indirect means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt a non cooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit."
"This type of activity, sometimes referred to as the "human element," is frequently responsible for accidents, delays, and general obstruction even under normal conditions." The book seems to have originated in Europe and I assume was directed at friendly civilians living in enemy occupied territory.
So why am I sharing this with you? It's the last chapter or two that hit me between the eyes. It dawned on me that in some places in the government, we're really good at this. We're really good at doing this to ourselves. Maybe you have seen these behaviors. Maybe your being sabotaged. What do you think? Check these out:
(11) General interference with Organizations and Production
(a) Organizations and Conferences
(1) insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.
(3) Whenever possible, refer all matters to committees, to "further study and consideration. Attempt to make the committees as large as possible -- never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise workings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision -- raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
(b) Managers and Supervisors
(1) Demand written orders.
(2) "misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.
(3) Do everything possible to delay the delivery of orders. Even though parts of an order may be ready beforehand, don't deliver it until it is completely ready.
(4) Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.
(5) Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get them, argue about it. Wanr that inferior materials will mean inferior work.
(6) In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers on poor machines.
(7) insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye.
(8) make mistakes in routing so that parts and materials will be sent to the wrong places in the plant.
(9) When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions.
(10) To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
(11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
(12) Multiply paperwork in plausible ways. Start duplicate files.
(13) Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.
(c) Office workers
(1) make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses.
(2) Prolong correspondence with government bureaus.
(3) misfile essential documents.
(4) In making carbon copies, make one too few, so that an extra copying job will have to be done.
(5) Tell important callers that the boss is busy or talking on another telephone.
(6) Hold up mail until the next collection.
(7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope.
(d) Employees
(1) Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one, try to make a small wrench do when a big one is necessary, use little force where considerable force is needed, and so on.
(2) Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can: when changing the material on which you are working, as you would on a lathe or a punch, take needless time to do it. If you are cutting,shaping or doing other measured work, measure dimensions twice as often as you need to. When you go to the lavatory, spend a longer time there than is necessary.Forget tools so that you will have to go back after them.
(3) Even if you understand the language, pretend not to understand instructions in a foreign tongue.
(4) Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.
(5) Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.
(6) Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.
(7) Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so they will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms.
(8) If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to the management. See that procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management, involving the presence or a large number of employees at each presentation, entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so on.
(9) Misroute materials
(10) Mix good parts with unusable scrap and rejected parts.
(12) General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion
(a) Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.
(b) Report imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police.
(c) Act stupid.
(d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.
(e) Misunderstand all sorts of regulations concerning such matters as rationing, transportation, traffic regulations.
(f) Complain against eratz materials
(g) In public treat axis nationals or quislings coldly
(h) Stop all conversations when axis nationals or quislings enter a cafe.
(i) Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.
(j) Boycott all movies, entertainments, concerts, newspapers which are in any way connected with the quisling authorities.
(k) Do not cooperate in salvage schemes.
Warning text on page one states:
"The contents of this Manual should be carefully controlled and not be allowed to come into unauthorized hands."
Later the book describes two forms of sabotage. The first form requires "... planning and the use of specially trained operatives." The second form "...the ordinary individual citizen-saboteur can perform." It's the second form which caught my attention.
To be clear, this "...type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly indirect means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt a non cooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit."
"This type of activity, sometimes referred to as the "human element," is frequently responsible for accidents, delays, and general obstruction even under normal conditions." The book seems to have originated in Europe and I assume was directed at friendly civilians living in enemy occupied territory.
So why am I sharing this with you? It's the last chapter or two that hit me between the eyes. It dawned on me that in some places in the government, we're really good at this. We're really good at doing this to ourselves. Maybe you have seen these behaviors. Maybe your being sabotaged. What do you think? Check these out:
(11) General interference with Organizations and Production
(a) Organizations and Conferences
(1) insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.
(3) Whenever possible, refer all matters to committees, to "further study and consideration. Attempt to make the committees as large as possible -- never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise workings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision -- raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
(b) Managers and Supervisors
(1) Demand written orders.
(2) "misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.
(3) Do everything possible to delay the delivery of orders. Even though parts of an order may be ready beforehand, don't deliver it until it is completely ready.
(4) Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.
(5) Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get them, argue about it. Wanr that inferior materials will mean inferior work.
(6) In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers on poor machines.
(7) insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye.
(8) make mistakes in routing so that parts and materials will be sent to the wrong places in the plant.
(9) When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions.
(10) To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
(11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
(12) Multiply paperwork in plausible ways. Start duplicate files.
(13) Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.
(c) Office workers
(1) make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses.
(2) Prolong correspondence with government bureaus.
(3) misfile essential documents.
(4) In making carbon copies, make one too few, so that an extra copying job will have to be done.
(5) Tell important callers that the boss is busy or talking on another telephone.
(6) Hold up mail until the next collection.
(7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope.
(d) Employees
(1) Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one, try to make a small wrench do when a big one is necessary, use little force where considerable force is needed, and so on.
(2) Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can: when changing the material on which you are working, as you would on a lathe or a punch, take needless time to do it. If you are cutting,shaping or doing other measured work, measure dimensions twice as often as you need to. When you go to the lavatory, spend a longer time there than is necessary.Forget tools so that you will have to go back after them.
(3) Even if you understand the language, pretend not to understand instructions in a foreign tongue.
(4) Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.
(5) Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.
(6) Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.
(7) Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so they will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms.
(8) If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to the management. See that procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management, involving the presence or a large number of employees at each presentation, entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so on.
(9) Misroute materials
(10) Mix good parts with unusable scrap and rejected parts.
(12) General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion
(a) Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.
(b) Report imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police.
(c) Act stupid.
(d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.
(e) Misunderstand all sorts of regulations concerning such matters as rationing, transportation, traffic regulations.
(f) Complain against eratz materials
(g) In public treat axis nationals or quislings coldly
(h) Stop all conversations when axis nationals or quislings enter a cafe.
(i) Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.
(j) Boycott all movies, entertainments, concerts, newspapers which are in any way connected with the quisling authorities.
(k) Do not cooperate in salvage schemes.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Presentations and Podcasts on Transformation
I've delivered a great many presentations on the subject of Defense Business Transformation during the four years I was the Chief for Defense Business Transformation for the Military Health System. I delivered these presentations in a medical community context, but the Defense Business Transformation content easily translates to any DoD environment.
Follow this link to take your pick of 45 months of weekly presentations: http://www.health.mil/dbt/dbtcommunity.aspx
These were delivered to a core community of just under 300 people from 7 different organizations each week. They were never all in the same room at the same time, but they rotated in and out and always got the briefing by mail.
I also prepared a number of ten minute podcasts on the subject of Defense Business Transformation. Each is delivered with music and stories to make the subject more interesting.
Follow this link to my podcasts: http://www.health.mil/dbt/podcast.aspx
My favorite ones are the last three. It took me a while to get used to the format, the studio, etc.
It's all free for the taking, so if you have an interest in the subject of Transformation in the Department of Defense, help yourself!
Follow this link to take your pick of 45 months of weekly presentations: http://www.health.mil/dbt/dbtcommunity.aspx
These were delivered to a core community of just under 300 people from 7 different organizations each week. They were never all in the same room at the same time, but they rotated in and out and always got the briefing by mail.
I also prepared a number of ten minute podcasts on the subject of Defense Business Transformation. Each is delivered with music and stories to make the subject more interesting.
Follow this link to my podcasts: http://www.health.mil/dbt/podcast.aspx
My favorite ones are the last three. It took me a while to get used to the format, the studio, etc.
It's all free for the taking, so if you have an interest in the subject of Transformation in the Department of Defense, help yourself!
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Solving Real World Problems With Enterprise Architecture
The concept of Enterprise Architecture isn't really difficult to understand. Creating an Enterprise Architecture (EA) is simply a matter of using a standard notation to describe the people, tools and rules of an enterprise. Describing an enterprise is theoretically useful to decision makers because it allows them to see the relationships between things.
Using a standard notation is also theoretically useful to decision makers and personnel from different organizations because it creates a "common currency" for exchanging ideas and communicating with one another. The thought being - if you understand the notation, you can find your way around anyone's model in a short amount of time. Why do we need to do that?
It is not uncommon for decision makers to wonder, "If I make X decision..:"
- Who might be affected?
- What systems might be affected?
- What resources might be affected?
- Would we break something?
- What would give me the biggest bang for my buck?
- What information is available in the Enterprise to help me measure progress against a particular goal or objective?
In theory, the enterprise architecture model was designed to help answer these questions. It can be a useful tool when used in a large enterprise like the Department of Defense, or in one of the sub-components of the Department of Defense like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, etc.
Title 10 of the United States Code § 2222 requires that all Department of Defense business IT investments (modernizations, enhancements or development efforts) assert "compliance" with the Enterprise Architecture (EA). Without "compliance," there will be no authority given to spend money on an investment. If there is no "obligation authority" granted by the Defense Business Systems Management Committee (as defined by 10USC§186), then someone is eventually going to jail, paying a fine, or getting relived of duty.
The actual language states:
This notion of "compliance" with the architecture has been the subject of many debates since the law went into effect. People wonder what they have to be compliant with: the model? the content? the need to draw diagrams?
We get a clue from language later in the same statute. It tells us what content needs to be in the Enterprise Architecture:
Based on my personal experience, having conducted due diligence on more than $1 Billion of these investments, this is 1. apparently not clear enough and 2. not translating into direct benefits to the Department.
Most of the letters that I've seen assert "compliance" with the architecture are representing little more than the fact that that there is a diagram of the investment being reviewed (often referred to as solutions architecture) drawn, and that this diagram somehow has the same or similar words on it as can be found in the diagram of the Enterprise Architecture. The fact that an investment is or is not documented as compliant with the architecture has had little or no effect on business as usual. It mostly means that the file folder of paperwork on that investment just got a little heavier (due to the weight of the added diagrams and a piece of paper that says the diagrams are there). That's it.
It's not useful to anyone to spend the number of hours (and dollars) one must spend on creating a diagram as detailed as a solutions architecture - only to have it visually and semantically mapped to another diagram and make a file folder heavier. I've witnessed intelligent people spending days just changing the color scheme of boxes so that one model looks like the other. Then, when the colors are matched and the right box is in the middle of the paper, step forward and proudly proclaim "We're compliant with the architecture!"
What they really mean is they are compliant with the methodology described in the Department of Defense Architecture Framework and have found a way to make the words between the two models look the same.
What we need is a healthy dose of reality. If we can find a way to inject reality into these models, they can be extremely useful.
By way of example, let's assume that something bad happens somewhere in a theater of operations. As a former combat medic, I'll use a medical situation to illustrate my point.
A soldier is severely wounded by a road side bomb. He receives shrapnel wounds to his neck and, because there is a short window of time to treat this soldier, he is air lifted to a local NATO alliance facility. The doctors there examine him, rush him up to the operating room, repair his wound and 10 minutes later, the soldier is dead.
The medical teams are initially confused because although the wounds were serious, they were immediately controlled and the soldier appeared otherwise strong. By all accounts, this soldier should have survived. An investigation is started.
After the investigation is complete, it is determined that the soldier died from an allergic reaction to the anesthesia administered in the operating room. The NATO team did not have access to the soldier's medical records, his past medical history, or a record of what he was allergic to. The severe blood loss made this soldier much less capable of handling the allergic reaction. He died.
The report gets filed in a lesson's learned database, and is recovered by a team of proactive architects a year or two later. They read through the case with great interest. It seems to them that they have found a data sharing problem that can be solved.
They contact some military doctors, share what they've found and get their feedback. The doctors tell them that in order to prevent this kind of tragedy in the future, all NATO and field hospital medical teams need to have 9 data fields: patient demographics, past medical history and allergy information. If they can get that info in a timely manner, many lives could be saved.
The architects are excited. They take what they have learned and translate it into specific data and system requirements. Then they take their new package of requirements to leadership, explain the situation, gain approval, and express that information in the DoD Enterprise Architecture. From that point forward, the 9 data field requirement sits in the model in a place where the affected data exchange between DoD electronic medical records and NATO and field hospital units is represented.
Staff can come and go. Everybody in the investment review process may know nothing about what happened to our unfortunate fallen soldier. It doesn't matter! From this point forward, every relevant business IT investment that comes through the investment review process will be subjected to a requirement to carry those 9 data fields. Every affected business IT system will, from that point forward, be forever altered to make sure that those 9 data fields are available for the medical teams who need them. The problem that caused a soldier to die is eliminated!
Back to our legal language: by doing this, we just satisfied section (d) (2) by inserting "Policies, procedures, data standards, and system interface requirements that are to apply uniformly throughout the Department of Defense."
If we treat compliance in this way, Enterprise Architecture compliance becomes compliance with Policies, procedures, data standards, and system interface requirements that are to apply uniformly throughout the Department of Defense. We will deliberately eliminate real world problems - one investment at a time.
Isn't this a better compliance standard to live up to than compliance with a model?
To listen to a 10 minute audio podcast I made on this subject a couple of years ago, click the following link: http://www.health.mil/dbt/downloads/The%20Power%20of%20EA.mp3
Using a standard notation is also theoretically useful to decision makers and personnel from different organizations because it creates a "common currency" for exchanging ideas and communicating with one another. The thought being - if you understand the notation, you can find your way around anyone's model in a short amount of time. Why do we need to do that?
It is not uncommon for decision makers to wonder, "If I make X decision..:"
- Who might be affected?
- What systems might be affected?
- What resources might be affected?
- Would we break something?
- What would give me the biggest bang for my buck?
- What information is available in the Enterprise to help me measure progress against a particular goal or objective?
In theory, the enterprise architecture model was designed to help answer these questions. It can be a useful tool when used in a large enterprise like the Department of Defense, or in one of the sub-components of the Department of Defense like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, etc.
Title 10 of the United States Code § 2222 requires that all Department of Defense business IT investments (modernizations, enhancements or development efforts) assert "compliance" with the Enterprise Architecture (EA). Without "compliance," there will be no authority given to spend money on an investment. If there is no "obligation authority" granted by the Defense Business Systems Management Committee (as defined by 10USC§186), then someone is eventually going to jail, paying a fine, or getting relived of duty.
The actual language states:
"(a) CONDITIONS FOR OBLIGATION OF FUNDS FOR DEFENSE BUSINESS SYSTEM MODERNIZATION. — Effective October 1, 2005, funds appropriated to the Department of Defense may not be obligated for a defense business system modernization that will have a total cost in excess of $1,000,000 unless—
"(1) the approval authority designated for the defense business system certifies to the Defense Business Systems Management Committee established by section 186 of this title that the defense business system modernization—
"(A) is in compliance with the enterprise architecture developed under subsection (c);
This notion of "compliance" with the architecture has been the subject of many debates since the law went into effect. People wonder what they have to be compliant with: the model? the content? the need to draw diagrams?
We get a clue from language later in the same statute. It tells us what content needs to be in the Enterprise Architecture:
"(d) COMPOSITION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE. — The defense business enterprise architecture developed under subsection (c)(1) shall include the following:
"(1) An information infrastructure that, at a minimum, would enable the Department of Defense to—
"(A) comply with all Federal accounting, financial management, and reporting requirements;
"(B) routinely produce timely, accurate, and reliable financial information for management purposes;
"(C) integrate budget, accounting, and program information and systems; and
"(D) provide for the systematic measurement of performance, including the ability to produce timely, relevant, and reliable cost information.
"(2) Policies, procedures, data standards, and system interface requirements that are to apply uniformly throughout the Department of Defense."
Based on my personal experience, having conducted due diligence on more than $1 Billion of these investments, this is 1. apparently not clear enough and 2. not translating into direct benefits to the Department.
Most of the letters that I've seen assert "compliance" with the architecture are representing little more than the fact that that there is a diagram of the investment being reviewed (often referred to as solutions architecture) drawn, and that this diagram somehow has the same or similar words on it as can be found in the diagram of the Enterprise Architecture. The fact that an investment is or is not documented as compliant with the architecture has had little or no effect on business as usual. It mostly means that the file folder of paperwork on that investment just got a little heavier (due to the weight of the added diagrams and a piece of paper that says the diagrams are there). That's it.
It's not useful to anyone to spend the number of hours (and dollars) one must spend on creating a diagram as detailed as a solutions architecture - only to have it visually and semantically mapped to another diagram and make a file folder heavier. I've witnessed intelligent people spending days just changing the color scheme of boxes so that one model looks like the other. Then, when the colors are matched and the right box is in the middle of the paper, step forward and proudly proclaim "We're compliant with the architecture!"
What they really mean is they are compliant with the methodology described in the Department of Defense Architecture Framework and have found a way to make the words between the two models look the same.
What we need is a healthy dose of reality. If we can find a way to inject reality into these models, they can be extremely useful.
By way of example, let's assume that something bad happens somewhere in a theater of operations. As a former combat medic, I'll use a medical situation to illustrate my point.
A soldier is severely wounded by a road side bomb. He receives shrapnel wounds to his neck and, because there is a short window of time to treat this soldier, he is air lifted to a local NATO alliance facility. The doctors there examine him, rush him up to the operating room, repair his wound and 10 minutes later, the soldier is dead.
The medical teams are initially confused because although the wounds were serious, they were immediately controlled and the soldier appeared otherwise strong. By all accounts, this soldier should have survived. An investigation is started.
After the investigation is complete, it is determined that the soldier died from an allergic reaction to the anesthesia administered in the operating room. The NATO team did not have access to the soldier's medical records, his past medical history, or a record of what he was allergic to. The severe blood loss made this soldier much less capable of handling the allergic reaction. He died.
The report gets filed in a lesson's learned database, and is recovered by a team of proactive architects a year or two later. They read through the case with great interest. It seems to them that they have found a data sharing problem that can be solved.
They contact some military doctors, share what they've found and get their feedback. The doctors tell them that in order to prevent this kind of tragedy in the future, all NATO and field hospital medical teams need to have 9 data fields: patient demographics, past medical history and allergy information. If they can get that info in a timely manner, many lives could be saved.
The architects are excited. They take what they have learned and translate it into specific data and system requirements. Then they take their new package of requirements to leadership, explain the situation, gain approval, and express that information in the DoD Enterprise Architecture. From that point forward, the 9 data field requirement sits in the model in a place where the affected data exchange between DoD electronic medical records and NATO and field hospital units is represented.
Staff can come and go. Everybody in the investment review process may know nothing about what happened to our unfortunate fallen soldier. It doesn't matter! From this point forward, every relevant business IT investment that comes through the investment review process will be subjected to a requirement to carry those 9 data fields. Every affected business IT system will, from that point forward, be forever altered to make sure that those 9 data fields are available for the medical teams who need them. The problem that caused a soldier to die is eliminated!
Back to our legal language: by doing this, we just satisfied section (d) (2) by inserting "Policies, procedures, data standards, and system interface requirements that are to apply uniformly throughout the Department of Defense."
If we treat compliance in this way, Enterprise Architecture compliance becomes compliance with Policies, procedures, data standards, and system interface requirements that are to apply uniformly throughout the Department of Defense. We will deliberately eliminate real world problems - one investment at a time.
Isn't this a better compliance standard to live up to than compliance with a model?
To listen to a 10 minute audio podcast I made on this subject a couple of years ago, click the following link: http://www.health.mil/dbt/downloads/The%20Power%20of%20EA.mp3
Friday, May 1, 2009
There's a Place for Intolerance in Good Government
Just yesterday, I was listening to a senior government official talk about the fact that he has never been able to understand the rush to spend money that every government official is accustomed to each fall. He asked, with a shrewd look, how many corporations in America live by the "Spend everything!" credo? He reminded us all of an issue that's been bugging me for years.
The Department of Defense prepares a budget, submits it to Congress, and then is doled out money in small increments (usually 1 to 3 years worth) to accomplish the mission. Money "expires" according to a prescribed time table - money for some purposes has a longer "shelf life" than money for other purposes. If the money doesn't all get spent by the end of the fiscal year in which it "expires," the unspent portion goes back into the Treasury.
That could be a good thing, except for the fact that when it comes time for the next budget review, the government officials who saved money - the ones who would otherwise have given back to the tax payers - who some might think did a GOOD job by accomplishing their mission under budget, are actually criticized for not being able to accurately predict their funding needs. Their new budget gets cut by whatever amount they returned to the Treasury. After all, someone says, they obviously did not need that much.
Interesting, no? Instead of rewarding government leaders for managing money well and contributing to lowering the national deficit, the net effect is that good stewards are punished by having their spending power reduced. Under this system, the behavior that emerges is a mad rush to spend everything before September of each year. Spend on what, you might ask? Who cares! Just spent it fast! We're almost out of time!
The government has gotten a bad reputation (perhaps earned) for spending to much. Remember the old $30,000 hammer / $20,000 toilet seat jokes? But the truth about the cause of this problem isn't as simple as "wasteful government bureaucrats." Every organization has a system that it must work within. Often, very good people go to work in a bad system and get bad juice all over them.
Now, I hope you don't consider me unpatriotic or hypocritical for being critical of my government or the system it operates in. I'm proud of who we are and of what we do. I'm also a believer that it is our responsibility to be critical. This is how we get better together.
I was at an awesome conference three years ago. Lot's of big names were there and it was a limited audience of fairly senior government people. We listened to one speaker run through a list of characteristics, asking each time if we thought the characteristic was an example of good government.
He said "Collaboration!" and all hands went up. He said "Accountability!" and all hands went up. He said "Intolerant!" and maybe one or two overly enthusiastic hands went up - no doubt caught up in the spirit of the moment. He questioned us on that one. Why, he asked, should we be tolerant of things we should not be tolerant of? We're not asked to check our brains at the door when we report to work. In fact, there are some who believe that service to the country is a responsibility worth taking seriously.
Surely, the government is tolerant in the context of race, sex, age and other basic human characteristics, and that's a good thing! And we all like to get along and be good neighbors. But there are things that every responsible government employee should be intolerant of. Inefficiencies, redundant efforts, lethargy, silly spending of tax payer money... many things that we ought to be challenging "the system" on. It will only change if we are accountable for our own actions. Defense Business Transformation is about being accountable, and in some cases, intolerant.
The Department of Defense prepares a budget, submits it to Congress, and then is doled out money in small increments (usually 1 to 3 years worth) to accomplish the mission. Money "expires" according to a prescribed time table - money for some purposes has a longer "shelf life" than money for other purposes. If the money doesn't all get spent by the end of the fiscal year in which it "expires," the unspent portion goes back into the Treasury.
That could be a good thing, except for the fact that when it comes time for the next budget review, the government officials who saved money - the ones who would otherwise have given back to the tax payers - who some might think did a GOOD job by accomplishing their mission under budget, are actually criticized for not being able to accurately predict their funding needs. Their new budget gets cut by whatever amount they returned to the Treasury. After all, someone says, they obviously did not need that much.
Interesting, no? Instead of rewarding government leaders for managing money well and contributing to lowering the national deficit, the net effect is that good stewards are punished by having their spending power reduced. Under this system, the behavior that emerges is a mad rush to spend everything before September of each year. Spend on what, you might ask? Who cares! Just spent it fast! We're almost out of time!
The government has gotten a bad reputation (perhaps earned) for spending to much. Remember the old $30,000 hammer / $20,000 toilet seat jokes? But the truth about the cause of this problem isn't as simple as "wasteful government bureaucrats." Every organization has a system that it must work within. Often, very good people go to work in a bad system and get bad juice all over them.
Now, I hope you don't consider me unpatriotic or hypocritical for being critical of my government or the system it operates in. I'm proud of who we are and of what we do. I'm also a believer that it is our responsibility to be critical. This is how we get better together.
I was at an awesome conference three years ago. Lot's of big names were there and it was a limited audience of fairly senior government people. We listened to one speaker run through a list of characteristics, asking each time if we thought the characteristic was an example of good government.
He said "Collaboration!" and all hands went up. He said "Accountability!" and all hands went up. He said "Intolerant!" and maybe one or two overly enthusiastic hands went up - no doubt caught up in the spirit of the moment. He questioned us on that one. Why, he asked, should we be tolerant of things we should not be tolerant of? We're not asked to check our brains at the door when we report to work. In fact, there are some who believe that service to the country is a responsibility worth taking seriously.
Surely, the government is tolerant in the context of race, sex, age and other basic human characteristics, and that's a good thing! And we all like to get along and be good neighbors. But there are things that every responsible government employee should be intolerant of. Inefficiencies, redundant efforts, lethargy, silly spending of tax payer money... many things that we ought to be challenging "the system" on. It will only change if we are accountable for our own actions. Defense Business Transformation is about being accountable, and in some cases, intolerant.
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