True Cost is called by some a triple-bottom line (physical cost, ecological cost, social cost). Others talk about true cost to own (including all related fuels or batteries, toxic side effects etc), others talk about cradle to grave accounting to include complete recycling. Technically, true cost accounting prohibits negative external costs from being ignored. A gallon of gasoline may “cost” $5.00 to buy, but $12-15 in external costs are being imposed on both current and future publics. At root true cost accounting is about holistic analytics with absolute integrity.
Another path is to search for <True Cost> without quotes. That produces the following selection, which has been resorted to have the posts appear in alphabetical order:
Preliminary reception: What did not work need not be attacked or over-thrown, but it does need to be under-stood, as in “Lessons Learned,” and displaced, as Buckminster Fuller and Mahatma Gandhi both articulated–both favoring, as I do, a non-violent measured and very public approach–transparency as the bridging method. The more this dialog goes forward, the more I see Information Operations as the essence of Public Administration in the 21st Century, with Public Diplomacy including Faith-Based Diplomacy, Commercial Ethics and Lessons Learned, and Civil Affairs all playing a huge role as a facilitator of the birthing process for a new process that is (public) intelligence driven, rooted in holistic integrity, and not at all about command & control or “the plan” but rather at enabling emergence with clarity, diversity, and integrity…more of less the point of the book INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (EIN, 2010), but now to be refined in the mass market book, Manifesto for Truth: Intelligence with Integrity . . . in the Public Interest (Evolver Editions, July 2012).
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Jason “JZ” Liszkiewicz asked me to address this one, and I do so gladly.
The signal difference between public administration of the past and of the future is this: governments are no longer central, indeed, governments are so clogged up that many are routing around them.
Public Administration in the 21st Century will be characterized by three major attributes:
Stephen Colbert Truthiness or the Truth?
1) The public, not the government, will define the rules of the road, the objectives of public policy, and the costs to be authorized. Elites and “experts” are in disgrace for the foreseeable future.
2) Information-sharing and sense-making will be public, not secret. Information, not money, will be the driver of behavior, priorities, and spending. Information, not authority, will be the means by which diverse and disparate entities are harmonized as a virtual whole.
3) “Administration” will be a mis-nomer. The field now called “public administration” is morphing very rapidly into a living discipline that for lack of a better term (yet) I call public intelligence. With everything fragmented and fraud being the norm, there is a need for public intelligence professionals who can help the public connect with truthful information (I love Steve Colbert's truthiness concept).
This is such an interesting topic to me personally that I am going to take some time to review my notes from my preparation for my 1987 written final examination for my Masters in Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Oklahoma (OU), and prepare a new essay on the core concepts and how they are changing.
Phi Beta Iota: It is typical of the West to believe that its Weberian and faux democratic processes are the “best way,” and to destroy (African, South American) or disparage (Asian) alternative forms of leadership. One has to live within the environment Lee Kuan Yew created to appreciate the extraordinary nature of his leadership. It is safe to say that his appreciation for intelligence is two-fold: demanding that all of his Ministers and legislators be educated (Singapore requires an earned MBA or equivalent as a pre-qualification for legislative candidacy) and that Singapore excell at computer processing, knowledge management, and toward organizational intelligence; and (we speculate) demanding that counter-intelligence against subversion from the West and others be the very best. The best book on intelligence in English out of Singapore, one that captures what Singpore is capable of, is Thomas Quiggin's Seeing the Invisible: National Security Intelligence in an Uncertain Age(World Scientific Publishing Company, 2007).
Singapore took a very wrong turn falling prey to Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness that appears to have found a home there, and to the snake oil from Cognitive Edge and others that mean well (e.g. the Arlington Institute) but actually have no clue about how to achieve M4IS2–intelligence with integrity in the public interest. We now look to Malaysia and Indonesia and perhaps Brunei for more interesting melded advances.
The existing US definitions of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) are severely deficient at multiple levels. See the official definitions below the line. Here is a proper definition devised with Joe Markowitz and others who actually know something about the discipline.
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is decision-support (an output not an input) that integrates open sources and methods including all forms of direct human knowledge elicited by intermediaries without subterfuge. It combines direct access to indigenous humans, gray literature, and the deliberate exploitation of both published and unpublished (field) human experts, advanced multi-disciplinary and multi-domain processing and integration or deconfliction, and advanced visualization and other methods for communicating context and insight to the supported decision-maker(s). OSINT is not the same as Open Source Information (OSIF), which is where the official definitions are now–publicly available information, nor is it the same as Open Source Data (OSD) or Validated Open Source Intelligence (OSINT-V), which can only be produced by an all-source analyst generally not a contractor. OSINT is a human intelligence function, not a technical intelligence function.
OSINT has been superceeded as the center of gravity for the future of intelligence by M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidimensional, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making. 90% of M4IS2 is not secret, not expensive, and not federal or controlled by any government. Outside the wire both OSINT and M4IS should be controlled by the J-3 via Civil Affairs (Human) and Information Operations (IO). Secret bureacracies (including “cyber-commands”) do not have the knowledge, mind-set, or reliability to manage OSINT and M4IS2 interactions with all manner of humans in every clime and place. Inside the wire, the J-2 becomes the integrator of all-source information, and Civil Affairs and IO become advisory functions to the J-3 on non-kinetic options.
