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Posting will continue to be light / nonexistent for the next eight days.  Click here to find out why.

Interesting profile in the Guardian reveals a different view on the burgeoning criminal practice of modern Somali piracy:

Our community thinks we are pirates getting illegal money. But we consider ourselves heroes running away from poverty. We don’t see the hijacking as a criminal act but as a road tax because we have no central government to control our sea. With foreign warships now on patrol we have difficulties.

But we are getting new boats and weapons. We will not stop until we have a central government that can control our sea.

Hmmm.  Robin Hoods working toward the creation of a central government?  It’s getting strange out there.

One of my favorite professors in grad school once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, just about any road’ll do.” An article in this week’s Economist sends a confusing message about whether American monetary policy needs a map or a destination, apparently arguing simultaneously for greater complexity and relative ignorance [subscription required]:

“You are not here to tell me what to do. You are here to tell me why I have done what I have already decided to do,” Montagu Norman, the Bank of England’s longest-serving governor (1920-44), is reputed to have once told his economic adviser. Today, thankfully, central banks aim to be more transparent in their decision making, as well as more rational. But achieving either of these things is not always easy. With the most laudable of intentions, the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, may be about to take a step that could backfire.

Unlike the Fed, many other central banks have long declared explicit inflation targets and then set interest rates to try to meet these. Some economists have argued that the Fed should do the same. With Alan Greenspan, the Fed’s much-respected chairman, due to retire next year—after a mere 18 years in the job—some Fed officials want to adopt a target, presumably to maintain the central bank’s credibility in the scary new post-Greenspan era. The Fed discussed such a target at its February meeting, according to minutes published this week. This sounds encouraging. However, the Fed is considering the idea just when some other central banks are beginning to question whether strict inflation targeting really works.

Transparency in decision making sounds like a good thing, as does rationality. An organization with no explicit goals might be a cause for concern (the whole “not knowing where you’re going” thing), and having only one target might also be suspect. Yet, the Economist article doesn’t offer alternatives, just vague observations about how other central banks do it:

In a recent article, Otmar Issing, the chief economist of the European Central Bank (ECB), threw down the gauntlet to the Fed. He argued that it is hard, but not impossible, to identify when asset prices are overshooting; there are benchmarks against which valuations can be judged. If prices look frothy, central banks should signal their concern. And they should certainly avoid contributing to “unsustainable collective euphoria”. Central banks should also look out for the surge in money and credit which often accompanies a bubble.

A more complex system of assessing the health of an economy would certainly be the most desirable option, the assumption here being that more information in the form of indicators from numerous perspectives would give a more thorough view. This article seems to be advocating doing nothing for now while figuring out what that optimal system might be. As a matter of organizational health, this seems to be a play toward  maintaining opacity in the Fed’s decision making processes and keeping its experience in targeting–any sort of targeting–at a minimum. While this certainly wouldn’t seem to be the Economist article’s aim, such would certainly be its outcome if Mr. Greenspan took it to heart.

Organizations do not go from inexperience to mastery in one step, an obvious fact overlooked far too often in examples such as Homeland Security, intelligence reform, and the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reforms. A mission being important–even life and death–does not negate this fact. The Economist has its heart in the right place, but the Fed would be foolish to accept these recommendations. A more successful strategy might be to begin with simple targeting as a waypoint to more complex performance measurement. This wouldn’t be the most optimal solution, but it would keep the urgent and the important in their proper perspectives.

UPDATE: By the way, all performance measurement systems have limitations and are necessarily reductionist. Having some good ones and continuing to try for a package of even better ones is more likely to move the organization toward its goals than a complete absence of them.

PublicOrgTheory is giving a lot of attention to the DOJ IG’s audit of the FBI’s Trilogy project, and you might be wondering why. Although these may not be questions that are frequently asked (AKA FAQs; wow, we have a lot of…well, they’re actually initialisms rather than acronyms…in this post. Please forgive the lack of periods in said initialisms.), it seems reasonable to offer some context to explain the abundance of attention paid here to this matter. Therefore:

What is Trilogy?

From the audit report:

Initiated in mid-2001, the objective of Trilogy is to modernize the FBI’s information technology (IT) infrastructure; provide needed IT applications for FBI agents, analysts, and others to efficiently and effectively do their jobs; and lay the foundation for future IT improvements in the FBI.Trilogy consists of three parts: 1) upgrading the FBI’s hardware and software, 2) upgrading of the FBI’s communications network, and 3) upgrading the FBI’s five most important investigative applications, including its antiquated case management system.

What is Virtual Case File (or VCF)?

Again, from the audit report:

While the infrastructure components are now in place to support improved user applications, the FBI is still far from implementing the third component of Trilogy. In this third phase, the FBI has been seeking to implement a case management system called the Virtual Case File (VCF), which was intended to replace the FBI’s antiquated case management application, the Automated Case Support system (ACS). The VCF was designed to improve the FBI’s ability to manage investigative case files, facilitate data and document searches, and share information within and among FBI offices. The need for a new automated investigative case management system to replace the existing obsolete and limited ACS system is vital to the FBI’s ability to perform its mission effectively.

Why should I care?

Well, that’s the question that probably led you here. The FBI has spent $170 million that will probably turn out to have been wasted on this effort (in fact, the other two parts of Trilogy ate up $78 million that were supposed to speed the effort but ultimately proved wasted). More disturbing than the waste of taxpayer dollars, though, is this observation from an earlier post in this space:

Difficult as it may be to believe, there’s more riding on VCF than avoiding the waste of over a half a billion dollars of taxpayer funds. VCF offers the promise of allowing the FBI to “connect the dots”. The Times article cites F.B.I. director Robert S. Mueller’s testimony to a Senate panel that the bureau’s current system is so limited that it is unable to search for terms such as “flight” and “schools” together; rather, the system must search for words one at a time.

If you think the mission of detecting and disrupting terrorist attacks is an important one, then providing the agencies who do that sort of thing with tools more advanced than those available to the mass of us seems pretty important.

That’s a first cut. This post will continue to evolve as new questions occur to you (or me). Send questions and suggestions to josephlogan@airpost.net.