White Paper

 

Resilience Project [1]

 

Dr Paul S Prueitt [2]

 

April 12 2007

 

Version 7

slightly  revised in November 2009
 

Ownership by the business sector over IT procurement
has been made a matter of law due to the recent expenditure
of 338 billions of dollars on the single federal program called e-Gov
.

  The Resilience Project: Preamble


Many benefits exist if the Resilience Project
finds its required first year budget of 6.8 billion dollars.

Benefits to be expected from the Resilience Project's work


 

Table of Contents (hyper linked)

Additional supporting materials [3]

 

 

 

 

 

The Resilience Project: Preamble

Personal knowledge editors and knowledge operating systems (new - 4/15/07)

Simplification of computer interfaces

Why usability matters in software products

Social issues and groupthink

Benefits to be expected from the Resilience Project's work

The SafeNet

Introduction to the New Science

Request to the Speaker of the House of Representatives

Ownership and Transparency

Shift in Information Science

Focus on Resilience after Disaster

Issues in Foundations

Political Justification for Federal Involvement

Computational Models of Resilience

 

Appendix A: First-school/second-school controversy

Appendix B: Category and Perception

Appendix C: The Aspects Framework

Appendix D: International Standard

 


 

The Resilience Project: Preamble [4]


"U.S. federal investments in government IT spending increased steadily from approximately 36.4 billion dollars in 2001 to 59.3 billion in 2004. According to OMB estimates, eighty percent of this spending is for consultants. Technical expertise and human capital in the federal government is being greatly weakened as a result of the "competitive outsourcing" policy and lack of human capital with IT expertise in the federal government."


K. E. Fountain, "Prospects for the Virtual State" (2004)


 

Written in 2005 and revised in November 2009, the Resilience Project White Paper sought to renew information science by coordinating broad scale collaboration amongst scholars, business leaders, innovators, democratic institutions and international agencies. The collaboration was to be about how a Bridge to the Future might be developed using a simplification of over complicated IT paradigms and standards.  As a consequent of this renewal, we sought to make it far easier for each individual human to know oneself.  As knowledge of self developed, we imagined that many individuals would choose to develop small sustainable communities.  These communities would focus on good living in a harmonic balance with the Earth. Is this such a stretch? Many feel that the answer is no, it is not a stretch. 


In the eight years 2000-2008 the U. S. government essentially became an instrument of the corporate business sector.   Now in 2010, as we push in the opposite direction, we are faced with a system of systems collapse.  The most obvious system collapse is the financial system, but this system is part of other systems that are also in collapse.  The rebuilding process should take into account some new principles, principles developed from a clear perception about why the systems of systems collapse is occurring.  Central to all of this are the questions about ownership.


The lesson learned is that government and business should be clearly separated and that government at all times should provide a complete and public transparency on business processes.  This separation should then allow free market entrepreneurship to take a strong hand in driving the U. S., and world, economy. Private
entrepreneurship could then lead the necessary decentralization of economies and do so without violating the individual human and the environment.  Again we ask the practical question. Might we create a better private sector by creating a better public sector?  By creating a better public sector might we push those things that should be reserved to free market entrepreneurship out away from the government influence, while reserving those things that should be public as part of a government service? 


The bold proposal might arise from the national debate over health care.  Government should not be in the business of providing health care services. On the other hand there should be only government health care insurance system.  There should be a single payer.  To make this work the business system that provides health care should be without government participation, except as the payer.  Transparency would be provided over outcomes and individual
entrepreneurship encouraged through a free market. Choice would evolve to individual humans and doctors rather than committees.  But if attempted, how is such a separation between government and the entrepreneurship sector to be created and maintained?  We conjecture that the necessary element is information transparency and interoperability of data transfer within a digital communication medium.  We do not suggest that an absolute separation is possible, only that the nature of private enterprise be questioned at least as deeply as those who are purist about this suggest that the public sector can do no good. 

continued . . .