I watched a video a Navy colleague had done some time ago about a unique way he led his command in Pensacola, FL. Now a Navy Captain, Sean Heritage worked to merge two worlds:
The structured, top-down, organized, bureaucratic world that is the U.S. Navy;
With the entrepreneurial, agile, creative, and much messier world of companies like Facebook, Google, Apple.
I invite you to watch his video below:
I was particularly drawn to his comparison of “people” to the “Truffula” trees of the Dr. Seuss book (and movie) The Lorax, and how it resonated with me – why is that organizations SAY that people are their most important asset, but continue to treat them otherwise?
The truth is that in most organizations, they take better care of their furniture than they do their staff.
If instead, they would really invest in their people, with development of good managers, better alignment of staff to work, reduction is stupid or useless rules and processes, better alignment between personal and business goals, increased opportunities for personal growth and development, etc, I think it would solve so many other problems these organizations face today – stagnant productivity, low morale, lack of creativity, high staff turn-over, increased cyber-security risks, and others.
r/Chuck
P.S. If you don’t get the reference to the Truffula Trees, than you probably didn’t watch his video 🙂
“Far too many people do not know how to enjoy even the simple things of life and create personal success. They expect others to entertain them, to create opportunity, and even to do the work. Many workers lack the skill and motivation to accept responsibility and accountability. They want to be led but don’t want to follow. They want to be taught but don’t want to learn. And when life deals a blow, they lack the motivation and skill to overcome adversity. Instead they seek pity and help.”
What a crock of crap…i would argue that these are all symptoms of defeat, caused by continual abuse by managers who treat their furniture better than they treat their people.
I submit that every employee on day 1 looks forward to doing meaningful work, at a good wage, to be trained and provided the tools to perform their job, and to be recognized and rewarded for having done well.
Unfortunately, many organizations treat their staff as “human capital” instead of humans, placing them under untrained managers, who learned management from the last generation of untrained managers. They are also subjected to (frankly) stupid administrative rules that seek goals of efficiency over human engagement.
If you truly believe that people “lack motivation” than you really do not understand what motivation is. It is the product of “understanding the value of what you do” and “having the confidence to be successful” and I submit is the organization’s responsibility to address both areas:
Do your staff r-e-a-l-l-y understand the importance of what they do?; and
Have you helped them have the confidence to be successful.
It’s important to remember that people (in general) are ALWAYS motivated, they just might not be motivated to do what YOU want them to do. While i agree that selecting the right employees is important, I think it’s what you do with them after you hire them that determines how well they will serve your organization – here are five questions to ask yourself:
Did you follow through with all of the promises made to the person you hired? Or did you put them in a different job than you promised?
Did you provide them with the training and development you promised them? Or did you say you can’t afford for them to take the time off for that?
Did you put them under competent leadership? Or did you stick them under an abusive or untrained manager?
Do you provide them with the tools and materials to do their job effectively? Or do you have mounds of bureaucracy and administrative bean counting they must endure to do their jobs?
Finally, do you have programs in place to reward and incentivize intrinsic motivation, innovation, and self-direction? Or do you just focus on compliance to “that’s the way we do it here” mentality that kills the human spirit.
Employee engagement (IMHO) is really not that hard – start with treating your employees as human beings, treat staff the way you would want to be treated, and for god’s sake – get rid of those managers that you know you should have let go a long time ago. r/Chuck
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its 2012 National Network of Fusion Centers Assessment Report and the results are encouraging. DHS reported that (overall) fusion centers improved their capability scores by 11 points over the 2011 assessment report card. Summary findings, based on Critical Operating Capabilities (COCs):
COC 1 – Receive
All fusion centers (77 or 100%) have access to federally sponsored Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) information sharing systems.
Every fusion center (77 or 100%) has at least one person cleared to access Secret information, but regular staff turnover means that fusion centers will continue to request new clearances (approximately 500 new clearance requests in the next 12 months).
A significant number of fusion centers have on-site access to classified information sharing systems (66 or 85.7%).
Fusion center use of the DHS Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) Whitelist (Whitelist) is limited (41 or 53.2%).
COC2 – Analyze
Fusion centers are highly involved in assessing threat and risk for their area of responsibility (AOR) (72 or 93.5%).
Fusion centers are obtaining and using customer feedback on their analytic products (structured feedback: 65 or 84.4%).
Analytic production plans are used widely across the National Network (60 or 77.9%).
Critical infrastructure protection capabilities continue to expand across the National Network (75 or 97.4%).
COC 3 – Disseminate
Despite progress since 2011, less than half (35 or 45.5%) of the National Network have a process in place to verify that customers are receiving their products.
Fusion centers are increasingly designating a single, primary information sharing system (72 or 93.5%), but Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) Intel is not frequently cited (23 or 29.9%) as the primary system for unclassified communication between fusion centers.
COC 4 – Gather
The number of fusion centers that have developed Standing Information Needs (SINs) has increased (59 or 76.6%), but continued attention to SINs development is necessary.
The National Network has a robust request for information (RFI) management capability (69 or 89.6%).
A significant percentage of the National Network are involved in the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI), in particular in providing line officers with information on the behaviors identified in the Information Sharing Environment (ISE)-SAR Functional Standard (SAR line officer training: 66 or 85.7%).
DHS has identified three areas for improving fision center capabilities:
Use Standing Information Needs (SINs) as the foundation of a customer-driven fusion process:
Fusion centers need to have a process for a) deriving and cataloguing regional and federal information and intelligence needs SINs , and b) actively tagging/associating these SINs with the information and intelligence products they produce.
Document key business processes and ensure consistent access to training:
High turnover in critical fusion center staff positions is going to be the norm, for a number of reasons – staff rotations, augmentation, contract renewals, promotions, etc. Fusion Center Directors must plan for this “churn” by taking the time to a) document the center’s core business processes, b) keep SOPs and policies up to date, and c) develop training and other performance support tools to minimize the impact of staff turnover on center operations.
Implement organizational planning and evaluation processes to continuously improve fusion center operations:
Fusion centers should clearly develop and communicate their center’s mission, goals, and objectives by developing a strategic plan, and using that plan as a tool to measure its performance. The strategic plan and periodic performance reports should help to communicate how investments in the fusion center result in tangible results, and b) help to drive annual budget requests to sustain or enhance current center capabilities.
I see gaps in these areas in my own work with fusion centers…unfortunately, many fusion centers are so busy with operational activities, that developing SOPs, training, strategic plans, etc., ends up on the back burner.
One other area, not directly addressed by the DHS assessment process is the development of an effective plan and roadmap for building an IT infrastructure that supports the four COCs. This too gets relegated to the back burner. In some cases, IT is addressed, but in a piecemeal fashion – Fusion Center Directors should elevate the need for an integrated IT plan, one developed from Fusion Center business processes and describes three key areas.
Suggested Components of a Fusion Center IT Strategy
Information and Intelligence exchanges – what information, data, and intelligence comes-in and goes-out of the Fusion Center?
What functional capabilities does the Fusion Center have now and which systems deliver those capabilities? (as-is)
What NEW functional capabilities does the Fusion Center need, and how will the center procure them? (to-be)
How much money does the Fusion Center need to a) sustain current capabilities and b) to implement the new capabilities?
Feel free to reach out to me if your center would like to discuss enhancing your operational and/or IT planning capability.
Get on a plane and join me at International Cyber Threat Task Force (ICTTF) Cyber Threat Summit in Dublin, Ireland 20/21 September 2012, be my guest by using the registration code: nowheretohideguest – http://www.cyberthreatsummit.com/
I just returned from the 2009 International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Conference that was held in Denver, CO. It was a very nice conference. I attended my usual CJIS and LEIM meetings, sat in on a few very informative workshop sessions, and (of course) reconnected with many friends and collegues. One particular conversation topic that came up many times was the budget problems state and municipal jurisdictions were facing and how many law enforcement agencies had or were about to lay off staff to accomodate fair-share budget cuts imposed by state, county, or city managers.
What made this matter of particular interest to me was that one of my law enforcement friends was considering paying back a grant they received to hire additional officers becuase they would (within a year) end up having to lay-off an equal number of officers to accomodate a nearly $3,000,000 budget cut the City was going to impose on the agency. I asked him what his Chief was doing to build a case to prevent from having to take the cut? From the tone of his response, it didn’t sound like they were confident that such a strategy would be successful. He then remarked how unfair it was that when the local Fire Department asked for a new station, they received the money to build it without question…but when the police department makes a comparable request, it fails to pass.
So, I looked him in the eye and asked him…”So what is YOUR firehouse?”
An agency’s budget is built (for the most part) on a political processs pretty much based on the old value equation. In other words the level of agency funding is based on the percieved public safety value of the actions and materiel to be funded; (VALUE=BENEFIT/COST). Agencies that want to protect or enhance their budget must take strategic (and political) actions to build the case that cutting their budget would be detrimental to sustaining safe communities.
Just as a Fire Department can easily show the value of a new fire truck or firehouse, law enforcement agencies must be able to articulate the consquences of either cutting their budget or failing to fund new initiatives, and they must do it in a way that captures the political will necessary to support their cause. Unfortunately, many agencies try to make the best of the situation and strip their internal capacity and/or reduce their services in other areas to compensate for the cuts, leaving themselves open to public criticism.
I suggested to my friend that instead of “sucking it up” and accepting the cut, that he (and his chief) figure out a strategy to build public and (if necessary) private support for either finding alternatives to the budget cut or (at a minimum) reducing the amount of the budget cut they are expected to take.
I am a big believer in the “shifting the burden” strategy whereby the law enforcement agency (or any agency for that matter) would layout the public safety problems faced by the community, the operational strategies required to address those issues, and an estimated cost of the resources (by budget category) to undertake those actions (performance based budget), and then present that to the County Manager/Council, City Manager/Council, etc., and let them decide what will be funded or not funded. The key here is to SHIFT THE BURDEN TO THEM TO SAY NO TO ADDRESSING PARTICULAR CRIME CONCERNS.
Unfortunately, many agencies will be uncomfortable with this strategy and would instead perfer to set their own priorities–some may disagree with me, but agencies that do this (in my opinion) leave themselves open to the risks associated with being held to those objectives without being given the resources to be successful. I also see the “shift the burden” strategy as a) a way for agencies to hold their state, county, city leadership accountable for fully funding public safety initiatives and b) as a strategy to prevent those same leaders from cutting initiatives they originally agreed to fund–this puts the burden for establishing the value of law enforcement in the hands of those with the checkbook, and…
What politician is going to want to tell their constituants that they want less public safety?
Remember the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cupscommercial? “You got chocolate on my peanut butter “…”No, you got peanut butter on my chocolate “…? Well, this is one of these stories…
It’s no secret, the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is a huge success. Not only has it been embraced horizontally and vertically for law enforcement information sharing at all levels of government, but it is now spreading internationally. A check of the it.ojp.gov website lists more than 150 justice-related Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD) based on NIEM–it’s been adopted by N-DEX, ISE-SAR, NCIC, IJIS PMIX, NCSC, OLLEISN, and many other CAD and RMS projects.
For at least the last four years, Search.org has been maintaining the Justice Information Exchange Model (JIEM) developed by Search.org. JIEM documents more than 15,000 justice information exchanges across 9 justice processes, 75 justice events, that affect 27 different justice agencies.
So if JIEM establishes the required information exchanges required in the conduct of justice system business activities, and NIEM defines the syntactic and semantic model for the data elements within those justice information exchanges…then…
Wouldn’t it make sense for JIEM exchanges to call-out specific NIEM IEPDs?
And vice-versa, wouldn’t it make sense for NIEM IEPDs to identify the specific JIEM exchanges they correspond to?
Change you can believe in! Change is here!Yes we can!
While we eagerly wait to see how our 44th President translates these memorable election mottos into tangible projects for rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, one colleague of mine, Charles Jennings, CEO of Swan island Networks stepped up and laid out eleven very forward leaning “shovel-ready” ideas for investing in America’s “virtual” infrastructure. Below I point out three of Charles’ ideas that have a direct impact on law enforcement and public safety,; and include some personal thoughts.
– National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) – Let’s speed-up development and implementation of NIEM; this is critical for expediting law enforcement and homeland security information sharing programs such as N-DEx, LInX, ISE-SAR, and others.
– Rural Broadband – While this is good for our ecomomy, it’s VERY good for small rural law enforcement agencies, many of which who still do not have decent internet access.
– State/Local/Tribal Clouds – While this is good for agencies of any size, this will (again) benefit the smaller law enforcement agencies who don’t have the time, expertise, or resources to be in the “IT” business; shared-services using in-the-cloud strategies can bring advanced capabilitis to these agencies very quickly.
Some who read this may take it as a rant against agencies/providers who say we need more money for implementing law enforcement information sharing (LEIS), but in-fact, this post is really about understanding the landscape and influencing the choices and priorities of state and county policymakers and the affected law enforcement executives.
Let me first layout the agency landscape :
There are about 14,000 state and local law enforcement agencies;
In roughly 3,000 counties;
That make up the 50 states of our great nation.
Now let’s layout the funding landscape:
For 2008 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allocated $3,200,000,000 (billion) for state and local assistance grants;
In that same year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) made another $2,000,000,000 available;
For 2008 that’s a total of $4,200,000,000;
For 2007 that number was $4,500,000,000;
For 2009, we are hoping that number stays about the same or goes even higher.
To all these numbers you must add funding from the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, Department of Health and Human Services, or State funding sources for LEIS.
Finally, let me lay out the cost landscape for LEIS:
In my eight or so years of experience of building and deploying LEIS, I’ve seen the costs associated with hooking up an agency to vary between $5,000 and $80,000 per record system connection;
On average though, I feel the safer number is between about $20,000 and $40,000;
For arguments sake, let’s use the high number of $40,000.
Now comes the fun part…let’s do some math…
To be realistic, let’s say that 25% of the 14,000 agencies are already sharing information;
That leaves about 10,000 agencies left to connect;
At $40,000 an agency, we would need a total of $560,000,000 (Million);
Divide that by the 3,000 counties, and we will need about $190,000 per county;
If we do this over three years, that’s only $63,000 per county, per year for three years!
With (on average) every county getting about $1,400,000 every year for law enforcement and public safety (out of the $4.2 Billion allocated annualy), I would like to think that we (collectively) can see the benefits of LEIS enough to spare $63,000 a year for three years to get it done.
Here’s where the issue of choices and priorities comes in. If we can agree that the money IS there, what we really need to work on are ways to convince the policymakers and law enforcement exectutives in those counties that investing a little in LEIS is a better investment than whatever it is their currently spending their part of the $4,200,000,000 on. Do you agree?
I’d also like to know what role youthink the IACP, MCC and NSA would play here?
Thoughts and comments invited…and yes, I used a calculator…;-)
Tom Peters liked to say “what gets measured gets done.” The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) took this advice to heart when they started the federal Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART) (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/part/) to assess and improve federal program performance so that the Federal government can achieve better results. PART includes a set of criteria in the form of questions that helps an evaluator to identify a program’s strengths and weaknesses to inform funding and management decisions aimed at making the program more effective.
I think we can take a lesson from Tom and the OMB and begin using a formal framework for evaluating the level of implementation and real-world results of the many Law Enforcement Information Sharing projects around the nation. Not for any punitive purposes, but as a proactive way to ensure that the energy, resources, and political will continues long enough to see these projects achieve what their architects originally envisioned.
I would like to propose that the evaluation framework be based on six “Standards for Law Enforcement Information Sharing” that every LEIS project should strive to comply with; they include:
1. Active Executive Engagement in LEIS Governance and Decision-Making;
2. Robust Privacy and Security Policy and Active Compliance Oversight;
3. Public Safety Priorities Drive Utilization Through Full Integration into Daily Operations;
4. Access and Fusion of the Full Breadth and Depth of Regional Data (law enforcement related);
5. Wide Range of Technical Capabilities to Support Public Safety Business Processes; and
6. Stable Base of Sustainment Funding for Operational and Technical Infrastructure Support.
My next step is to develop scoring criteria for each of these standards; three to five per standard, something simple and easy for project managers and stakeholders to use as a tool to help get LEIS “done.”
I would like to what you think of these standards and if you would like to help me develop the evaluation tool itself…r/Chuck
Today, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a new federal policy [document] that aims to increase terrorism related information sharing among members of the Intelligence Community (IC). The policy “directs agencies to work with their human resources departments to add items about information-sharing skills and behaviors to performance appraisals.”
The release of this policy effectively means that the sixteen politically appointed IC agency heads, all of their deputies, the hundreds of senior executive department heads, and thousands of mid-level division managers failed in their efforts to get their folks to share. I guess the thinking is that adding a sentence of two to the performance appraisal of each of the 200,000+ individuals in those agencies will make information sharing happen–wow, what a sad commentary to the failure of leadership in these agencies.
To me, information sharing is a “means to an end” and NOT an end in itself. Before you can say that you do not have sufficient information sharing, you should be able to say (specifically) what the impact of not having that information is to your mission activities. The diagram below illustrates a Knowledge Model (similar to one that I picked up during my work at NSA).
As you can see from the diagram–information leads to knowledge of “something”, and that something causes (or requires) specifc action, and the specifc action leads to “real-world-effects” (like the prevention or disruption of terrorism or other criminal activity). Some examples of impact statements include:
– “We are unable to ascertain the threats to water supplies in the city of xxx…”
– “We cannot determine the whereabouts of bad guy xxx…”
– “We do not understand the objectives of the xxx threat group…”
If you follow my logic so far, then you also have come to the conclusion that the lack of information sharing is really a management issue, driven by internal agency data sharing and security policies and should not be left to the purview of individuals within those agencies. Here are a couple other points to ponder in support of this thought:
1. I believe information sharing should primarily be implemented through technological mechanisms; take it out of the hands of agency individuals and political culture.
2. it should also be driven by MISSION needs and NOT just for the sake of sharing; many analysts will tell you we share TOO much irrelevant information and NOT ENOUGH of the stuff they really need.
3. No single individual in any agency should have the ability to withold information from another agency; if this is the case, there’s a manager somewhere who requires some alignment.
4. If individuals do hold back information, they do so against the will of their leadership (assumingly); most agency employees are loyal and will follow (to a fault sometimes) their manager’s will.
