Author: Tim J. Clark

Contracting Government: Waste, Irony and Humor

Government By Contractor Is A Disgrace, (Wall Street Journal)…Thomas Frank, Nov 26, 2008.

The irony if not the humor is that the same people who are perceived as not being capable of being “innovative, efficienct and flexible” are the ones that write and/or manage the contractors. The contracting system typically favors the contractors.

When government is “forced” to compete for work via A76/MEO, they win the majority of the times.

We don’t lack solutions that can be applied to continually improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government service (Baldrige critiera comes to mind); Leadership has always been the key.

Many jobs are best left to federal workers.

Back in 1984, the conservative industrialist J. Peter Grace was telling whoever would listen why government was such a wasteful institution.

One reason, which he spelled out in a book chapter on privatization, was that “government-run enterprises lack the driving forces of marketplace competition, which promote tight, efficient operations. This bears repetition,” he wrote, “because it is such a profound and important truth.”

And repetition is what this truth got. Grace trumpeted it in the recommendations of his famous Grace Commission, set up by President Ronald Reagan to scrutinize government operations looking for ways to save money. … Turn government operations over to the private sector and you get innovation, efficiency, flexibility.

What bears repetition today, however, is the tragic irony of it all. To think that our contractor welfare binge was once rationalized as part of an efficiency crusade.

As the George W. Bush presidency grinds to its close, we can say with some finality that the opposite is closer to the truth. 

Never Waste a Good Crisis?

Lean in hard Times 

I’m not a fan of the latest buzzwords and terms, e.g., lean, six sigma, et. al., but I certainly support application of  improvement related technologies that lean and six sigma represent. 

It’s not that we lack the solutions to make American industries more competitive, but the crisis is more more in leadership — the desire to lead others to strive in being the best.  Colts quarterback Peyton Manning immediately comes to mind of a leader that meets this criteria.

Is the crisis bad enough yet to motivate the Quality Leader in all of us to step up?

Toyota Gets It … Why does U.S. Auto Industry Choose Not To?

POST: Extreme Toyota’s Lesson for American Auto, November 19th, 2008 by Hal

While American Auto go hat-in-hand to Washington, I thought it might be instructive to take a look at what those firms have missed while Toyota has steadily out-invested, out-innovated and racked up more profits than all three combined. Who’s got the answer? How about three professors from a Japanese business school.

Deming’s advice to the Japanese in the 1950’s was to adopt a systems perspective where the consumer was the most important part of the production line, and to reduce variation — Advice that is relevant to any industry.

China: Individual Self-Improvement, Dale Carnegie

BOOK: “Dynamic Young Engines Driving China’s Epic Boom: Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, by Leslie T. Chang,” by Howard W. French, New York Times, 22 October 2008.

Ms. Chang, a former China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, describes this endless flow of labor from the hinterland to the booming cities of the east as the “largest migration in human history.” But she gives us something more personal as well, including an extended aside in which she explores her ancestors’ roots in China. The results are deeply affecting.

For nearly all, the greater goal is self-improvement, which they pursue by frequently jumping jobs, abandoning both friends and back pay as they bluff their way into better and better work.

China is locked in a Dale Carnegie era, with bookstore shelves dominated by titles purporting to explain how to gain a leg up.

Founding Fathers and War

COMMENTARY: Overlooked Exit Strategy  (Washington Times)…Bruce Fein

President-elect Barack Obama should embrace an overlooked riskless exit strategy for the war in Iraq that has inflicted more than the equivalent of another Sept. 11, 2001, on brave American soldiers.

Every Founding Father agreed that one man or small group of men should never be entrusted with authority to initiate warfare because they would be driven by visions of power and glory into reckless military adventures. Future Justice of the Supreme Court, James Wilson, at the Pennsylvania ratification convention, explained: “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.”

James Madison, future president of the United States and father of the Constitution, amplified in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature.”

Battlefield Robots, Ethical Decision Making, Science Fiction

A Soldier, Taking Orders From Its Ethical Judgment Center, (New York Times)…Cornelia Dean

In the heat of battle, their minds clouded by fear, anger or vengefulness, even the best-trained soldiers can act in ways that violate the Geneva Conventions or battlefield rules of engagement. Now some researchers suggest that robots could do better.

He said South Korea and Israel were among countries already deploying armed robot border guards. In an interview, he said there was “a headlong rush” to develop battlefield robots that make their own decisions about when to attack.

“It is not my belief that an unmanned system will be able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield,” Dr. Arkin wrote in his report (PDF), “but I am convinced that they can perform more ethically than human soldiers are capable of.”

The Three Laws of Robotics

In science fiction, the Three Laws of Robotics are a set of three rules written by Isaac Asimov, which almost all positronic robots appearing in his fiction must obey. Introduced in his 1942 short story “Runaround“, although foreshadowed in a few earlier stories, the Laws state the following:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

System Improvement: Guard and Reserve

Gates: Review Military’s Role In Homeland Defense, (Washingtonpost.com)…Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday ordered his top department leaders to conduct a broad review to determine whether the military, National Guard and Reserve can adequately deal with domestic disasters and whether they have the training and equipment to defend the homeland.

Gates: Active Force, Reserves Must Integrate, (ArmyTimes.com)…William H. McMichael
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates took a giant step Monday toward more tightly blending the active-duty military and reserve components into an “integrated total force,” calling for wide-ranging personnel policy changes, codifying the reserves’ homeland defense role and adequately funding 

 The Commission on the National Guard and Reserves – Report