Beyond Data Monitoring – Achieving the Sustainability Development Goals Through Intelligence (Decision-Support) Integrating Holistic Analytics, True Cost Economics, and Open Source Everything
BACKGROUND RESEARCH PAPER
Submitted to the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda
Translatable Full Text Below the Fold
배 아래에 번역 전체 텍스트
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النص الكامل للترجمة تحت طية
翻译全文下方折
Diterjemahkan Full Text bawah Lipat
ਫੋਲਡ ਹੇਠ ਅਨੁਵਾਦ ਪੂਰਾ ਪਾਠ
Перевести Полный текст ниже раза
This summer UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon established the Independent Expert Advisory Group (IAEG) to provide concrete recommendations on how to achieve a Data Revolution for sustainable development. The IEAG report – due in early November – will be a crucial opportunity to explain how better quality and more timely data can transform development. The group is also looking for innovative approaches to data collection, publication, and use.
To solicit input from all communities of practice – particularly academia – the IAEG is hosting a public consultation at undatarevolution.org to solicit input into its work until October 15, 2015. In spite of the short notice, we strongly encourage you to submit your ideas and suggestions for the data revolution. Please share this message widely and provide your comments on the IEAG website.
(Editor's Note: This blog post is derived from Clint Watts' Ginsburg Lecture delivered at the National Liberty Museum on September 16, 2014.)
The past week’s debate on how to counter ISIS has proven just how effective terrorism is as a tactic for extremist groups. Two videos showing the beheading of American hostages have provoked the largest U.S. response since the attacks of 9/11, compelling President Obama to hastily gather up a strategy to counter ISIS. Aside from the general confusion over what to call the group, there is even greater disagreement over what to do. Overall, I don’t disagree with most of the actions the U.S. is taking to counter ISIS, but I am baffled why ISIS, America’s third or fourth most pressing national security concern right now, requires such a reaction. The lesson for other extremist groups scattered from Morocco to Malaysia is clear – fly a black flag, film an atrocity and post it on the Internet and you too can capture the American media cycle and provoke a U.S. response.
LIST ONLY
1. Syrian Civil War
2. Turkish Border
3. Double-Edged Sword of Saudi Arabia
4. Arab Partner Nations
5. Iran is a bigger adversary to the US than ISIS
6. Sunni partners in Iraq
7. Shi'a dominated Iraqi Government
The self-referencing chattering class is up in arms about the $400 billion Russia-China gas deal, seeing it and the associated Russia-China alliance as a threat to the grand strategic ambitions of the United States to remain, in the words of President Obama at West Point, the world’s “indispensable”* power. Taking place against the immediate backdrop of the prevailing US narrative** describing the Ukraine Crisis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the gas deal is manna from heaven for the unreconstructed cold warriors and neocons in the press, the Pentagon, the defense industry, and the State Department who are fanning anti-Russian/anti-Putin hysteria with prognostications that the US, being on the cusp of a new Cold War, should not cut back its defense spending or its propensity to meddle in the affairs of others.
Viewed thru Russian and Chinese eyes, however, the gas deal may be part of a defensive grand strategy aimed at evolving pathways around Russia’s “NATO expansion problem” and China’s “pivot east” problem. The attached essay by Immanuel Wallerstein, a traditional ‘balance of power' scholar (in the best sense of the phrase), presents a fascinating speculation in this regard. Only time will tell if he is on to something, but his hypothesis is well worth thinking about.
I have reformatted Wallerstein’s essay to highlight his main points … if you find this distracting, the original is at this link.
The Department of Defense began producing the Quadrennial Defense Review in 1997 in response to requests from Congress triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Four of them have been released and the fifth will begin to appear in February or March of 2014.
The Department of State began producing the Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review in 2010. Unlike the Congressionally mandated QDR, this review was undertaken when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State with the intent to push American diplomacy out of its dated approach. Since John Kerry has replaced Hillary Clinton there is speculation that a 2014 QDDR may not be published. This has to be taken seriously, given that it appeared in Foreign Policy magazine.
The Department of Homeland Security also produced the QHSR for the first time in 2010. Like the QDR, this one was ordered by Congress, rather than internally motivated like the QDDR.
The Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review(warning: pdf) was first published in 2001, then again in 2005 and 2009, but I do not find a document for 2013. This is a mystery which I will delve into further, but this should not be read as the IC being behind in some fashion – the National Intelligence Council has produced a Global Trends report for each incoming president since 1979.
Looking at these four areas, Congress sought a systematic review of defense after the end of the Cold War and they made a similar effort to better understand Homeland Security in 2010. The State Department wishes for a better balance between diplomacy and defense and undertook their own quadrennial review. The NIC, now part of the DNI, has been in the habit of producing quadrennial reports for incoming presidents, but this is a work product for them, rather than an oversight and planning related document. They do produce some material like this, but it isn’t queued up for a top level review the way the other three are.
The QDR covers nearly $700 billion in annual expenditures. DHS has a budget of $60 billion, the State Department is about $55 billion, and it’s harder to characterize the intelligence budget but $50 billion is close to the mark.
The Intelligence Community’s Overloaded Life Boat begins to address counter-intelligence concerns at a time when budget cuts are going to lead to the elimination of programs. Edward Snowden’s whistle blowing has laid bare an NSA that is completely out of control, but he’s done us a huge favor in making it obvious we need better oversight. Both Manning and Snowden were young, low level employees who were in a position to walk away with their employer’s most important secrets. Does anyone believe that this hasn’t already happened with other contractors, acting out of a profit motive rather than patriotism?
Congress can begin to do its duty to the American people by formalizing quadrennial review requirements for both the State Department and the seventeen agencies under management by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
SHORT URL: http://tinyurl.com/EIN-UN-SDG
