November 11, 2006
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Community Centric Service Methodology Glass Bead Games
Lobbying Congress on the Merits of the National Project
(still being slightly edited for typos: 11/11/2006 9:43 AM)
Roy said:
Because many of our desired outcomes and
suggested processes for improving government operations are similar, I will
stay on board, as long as the intention, process, content, and output of this
effort for a proposal (e.g., National Proposal for identifying “Who gets the money and
how much, and how well they performed with it”) meets the broader group’s intent, not
just your personal intent. In these matters, is seems that you are not an
unbiased decision-maker in your “dedication” to this effort, which is why this
group’s consensus decision-making based on a collaborative proposal process is
needed. If you want to enlist a group of free-thinkers into this effort,
many with the same 30+ years of experience as you and I, can you live with a
proposal that is not exactly what you currently intend it to be?
Reply,
Of course I have no attachment to any particular part of a proposal. The difficulty of putting together a comprehensive re-formulation of computer science and information science and my particular short coming, opens me up to what I see is a mis-characterization. This is absolutely my fault. I apologize often for this.
I am expecting the proposal to undergo needed transformation - but transformation that does not drop the effort back under the control of IT vendors. A shift in economic power will, in fact, possible punish those who are vested in the status quo, but they are free to re-align to the new rules. Why not?
The work I have done can be re-shaped in a way that is honest and has grounding in the natural science. In the 3.2 M DARPA proposal (which was awarded to OntologyStream Inc and then withdrawn due to a political interference by Cyc Corp) we have a science committee of 20 respected scholars. It will be the task of these kinds of committees to decide on specifics.
http://www.ontologystream.com/area2/KSF/KnowledgeScience.htm
A similar committee is
indicated in the 2004 architecture developed for US Customs:
http://www.bcngroup.org/area1/2005beads/GIF/RoadMap.htm#_The_advisory_committee
At core, I suggest that the transformation will not be shaped by the kind of pure (un-checked) entrepreneurial force now seen in US Federal CIO Council meeting. This suggestion is based on an observation regarding why and how the current dysfunction in government IT procurement developed and is currently supported.
A new utility function for economic choice is suggested in:
"The Coming Revolution in Information Science"
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/TaosDiscussion/index.htm
but there is a great deal of work to refine and make correction to what I am presenting. I may have made some errors.
The recent work I am offering is specifically designed to say that at a certain date, all (what might be legally seen by courts as being) waste or fraud be excused. In 1992 a private conversation with an important program manager at DARPA allowed me to understand “his” observation that 80% of all classification of DARPA funding results in areas related to intelligence technology was due to someone simply covering up poor decisions. This is wisdom that I intend to continue to support.
It is far more important that those government program managers and IT vendors who have profited dishonestly (even if within a culture of dishonesty) be allowed to change behavior or to be retired.
The utility function over how IT contracts are awarded and measured should be changed, and taken out of the current “full” control by the industry giants; so that transparency and the principles of "provable optimal modeling and processes" be applied.
My claim is that, since the War has started, the levels of secrecy in IT contracts excuses increasing levels of profiteering. This is merely a claim that should be investigated by the new Congress.
John Sowa has NEVER made a commitment to the Nation Project, but his observations on the non-optimality of RDF and OWL (from the W3C organization) is on the record. The fact is, and John and many others agree, we are building poorly designed service oriented architecture (SOA) based on very poor underlying principles. Excellent alternatives like Topic Maps are pushed away. The outcome of this behavior by the IT industry giants (OMG and others) is to advantage a system designed to continue the unnecessary extraction of public wealth for efforts that are at core dishonest. However, it may be that those involved do not see this as dishonest, and there lies the rub.
(Again this is conjecture and can be made subject to specific investigations). The results may be to simply change the IT procurement practices so that more objective human science begins to control the behavior of these IT industry giants.
The key is clarity and transparency.
I do agree that this is an issue that we need to be clear on.
I am for amnesty over all specific instances of (found) waste and fraud in IT procurement based on the conjecture that the entire academic community is jointly responsible for the "error" leading to disciplines like artificial intelligence and software engineering. I assert that this shared responsibility lead to waste and fraud, and so assert also that the individuals actually involved may be excused in all but the most glaring of instances.
I assume that you would agree with the founding principles of the Knowledge Sharing Core.... but if you do not I would consider making modifications after some funding is established to actually build out something like the system outlined at
http://www.bcngroup.org/area2/knowledgeSharingFoundation.htm
Paul Prueitt