Top Secret Tinseltown

So this is a city with a lot of secrets. 

I’m not talking about just the run-of-the-mill, non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

This is Top Secret Tinseltown!

And even the stuff that comes out in the news–whether it’s clandestine transfers of $1.7 billion to the Ayatollahs in Iran or the Uranium One deal with the Russians, there is plenty of dirty little games going on. 

What was hilarious is when when saw this huge industrial shredding truck in the parking lot:

Paper Shredding * Electronic Destruction * Medical Waste Disposal

And there were a line of cars waiting to get rid of their little secrets.

I kid you not when I say that on a Saturday morning, there were at least 25 cars in line to dispose of their “stuff.”

Now who do you know in what city that waits 25 cars deep in line for an industrial shredder on a Saturday morning.

And the cars are pulling up, the trunks are popping open, and boxes and boxes of paper and electronic files are being handed over. 

Gee, I hope the Russians or Chinese aren’t getting into the shredding business…and inside the truck isn’t a large shredder but a bunch of analysts waiting for you to hand it all over. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal) 

A Mountain Of Data

So I heard this interesting perspective on information and data analytics…

Basically, it comes down to this: 

“Most organizations are data rich, but information/insight poor.”

Or put another way:

“Data is collected, but not used.”

Hence we don’t know what we don’t know and we end up making bad decisions based on poor information. 

Just imagine if we could actually make sense of all the data points, connect them, visualize them, and get good information from them.

How much better than a pile of rocks is that? 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Modesty And Privacy Of Body and Information

So modesty and privacy is very important in terms of propriety and security.

Both are intimately connected. 

Already as children, we learn not to show or talk about our “privates” to others. 

And as adults, we understand that there are certain things about ourselves that we don’t just talk about or divulge to others indiscriminately. 

Not being discrete with these and showing either your private parts or your personal information can get you in a load of trouble by giving others the opportunity to take undue advantage of you. 

Both open you up to be ridiculed or even raped of your person or information identity. 

That which is yours to use with others in propriety is instead disclosed for taking out from your control and for use against you. 

Security demands modesty of body and of information, and if not taken seriously, then no amount of lame covering will keep that which is private from public consumption. 😉

Poor Decision-Making Inc.

(Click the image for larger size)

___________________________

There is a funny Organization Chart of Indecision by Corter Consulting circulating on the Social Media. 

This graphic (above) by me can be thought of as the corollary for Poor Decision-Making.

It is headed by the Chief, Bad Decisions.

Supporting the Chief is the EVP of Strong-Arming.

Reporting to the Chief are 6 VPs of:

– Haste

– Intuition

– Incompetence

– Misinformation

– Narcissism

– Corruption

Followed by 16 Directors of:

– Get It Over With

– It’s Too Hard

– Feelings

– Myths

– I Just Don’t Know

– Ignorance

– Ineptitude

– Lack of Data

– Bad Data

– Misinterpretation

– What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)

– Legacy

– Arrogance

– Fraud

– Waste

– Abuse

Hope you enjoy this Org Chart of Poor Decision-Making and I look forward to your comments on it. 

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)

People Are Our Greatest Asset, Goodbye!

The Chinese are smart and talented, and there is a cyberwar going on. 

They are suspected are having just stolen the personnel information of 4 million federal government workers.

And there are 4.2 million active, including 1.5 million military personnel. 

So if as they are apt to say, “people are our greatest asset”…

…then we just sort of lost the CROWN JEWELS in terms of highly personal, sensitive, and critical information on the people that handle everything from defense and diplomacy to the economy, energy, the environment, justice, and health and wellbeing. 

Oops!

This is getting scary folks. 

When the adversary through cyber (and other) espionage can know our people, our technology, our communications, virtually everything…then we got some big vulnerabilities!

If we can’t defend ourselves adequately (at least for now), I hope at least we are doing okay on the offense! 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

More Information, Please

This was a funny sign in a local medical facility. 

Printed: “Labcorp is no longer in this building.”

Followed by in handwriting, “Then Where is it?”

Almost to the familiar reframe, “Well I dunno–do you? If not you–than who?”

These were plastered in multiple locations exactly like this. 

It’s funny, we think we are giving people information–the stuff they need. 

But when it comes across to the other person, perhaps all we’ve done is left them with more questions than answers. 

In an age of information technology, business analytics, big data, and artificial intelligence…we still can’t even seem to figure out the basics of managing information and communications with each other. 

Lots of products being heralded as the answer…including IBM’s Watson, but aside from answering Jeopardy questions, the jury is still out on whether this can really evolve to true AI.

If it was just a technology issue, we may already be getting close, but the bigger piece of this puzzle is people really understanding the challenges they confront, and being able identify and work with the information to solve these. 

Then maybe we would finally have the answers or at least where it is! 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Information Where We Look

I like this short video on advances in Augmented Reality by Applied Research Associates (ARA).

ARA supports DARPA’s Urban Leader Tactical Response Awareness and Visualization (ULTRA-Vis) program–to develop Augmented Reality (AR) for our soldiers.

Augmented Reality is “Virtual icons, avatars, and messages overlaid accurately on the real world.”

The purpose is to know”where you are and where objects are around you” and to “access information simply by looking at them.”

The interface is a heads-up wearable display, rather than an smartphone or tablet.

The AR integrates GPS, terrain information, commercial data, and sensors.

Further, you and others using this technology will be able to tag and share data in what I would call Social Reality (a mixture of social computing and augmented reality).

Here your world of information is augmented by other’s AR views shared with you.

AR offers an enormous opportunity to make our world far richer with information everywhere we look, rather than just when we look it up.

For it to be ultimately successful, the display will need to be worked in as an embed or overlay on our actual eyes (like a contact lens), rather than worn like Google Glass.

For the non-soldier, not every open field needs augmented reality–in fact, it would sort of spoil the natural beauty of it–but it sure won’t hurt to be able to turn it on, at will, to see which flowers are blooming and perhaps, whether there just might be a snake out there too. 😉

What’s Your Information Lifecycle

A critical decision for every person and organization is how long to keep information out there in the physical and cyber realms.

Delete something too soon–and you may be looking in vain for that critical document, report, file, picture, or video and may even violate record retention requirements.

Fail to get rid of something–and you may be embarrassed, compromised, ripped off, or even put in legal jeopardy.
It all depends what the information is, when it is from, and who gets their hands and eyes on it!

Many stars have been compromised by paparazzi or leaked photos that ended up on the front page of newspapers or magazines and even government officials have ended up in the skewer for getting caught red handed like ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner sexting on Twitter.

Everything from statuses to photos put on social media have gotten people in trouble whether when applying to schools and jobs, with their partners, and even with law enforcement.

Information online is archived and searchable and it is not uncommon for parents to warn kids to be careful what they put online, because it can come back to haunt them later.

Now smartphones applications like Snapchat are helping people communicate and then promptly delete things they send.

With Snapshot, you can snap a photo, draw on it, even add text and send to friends, family, others. The innovation here is that before you hit send, you choose how long you want the message to be available to the recipient before vanishing–up to 10 seconds.

Snapchat has sent over 1 billion messages since July and claims over 50 million are sent daily–although forget trying to verify that by counting up the messages because they have self-destructed and are gone!

Of course, there are workarounds such as taking a screenshot of the message before it vanishes or taking a photo of the message–so nothing is full proof.

Last year, according to The Atlantic, the European Commission proposed a “Right-To Be Forgotten” as part of their data protection and privacy laws. This would require social media sites to remove by request embarrassing information and photos and would contrast with the U.S. freedom of speech rights that protects “publishing embarrassing but truthful information.”

Now, companies like Reputation.com even provide services for privacy and reputation management where they monitor information about you online, remove personal information from sites that sell it, and help you with search engine optimization to “set the record straight” with personal, irrelevant, exaggerated or false information by instead publishing positive truthful material.

According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek (7 Feb. 2013), “Ephemeral data is the future,” but I would say comprehensive reputation management is the future–whether through the strategic management of permanent information or removing of temporary data–we are in a sense who the record says we are. 😉

I Hate Paper

Paper has been around for approximately two thousand years, since it’s invention in China, and it has served as the medium of choice for recording and sharing information ever since.

However, enter the age of information technology and we are now able to capture, process, and store far more information, quicker, cheaper, and more efficiently than we ever could with paper.

Combine that with the environmental impact and the need to conserve, and we have numerous federal laws calling for the reduction or elimination of paper, to the extent practical.

1) The Paperwork Reduction Act (1980) calls for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to regulate collection of information and establish information policies to reduce the paper handled by the government.

2) The Government Paperwork Elimination Act (1998) mandates the use of electronic forms, filings, and signatures for official business with the public.

3) E-Government Act (2002) requires use of the Internet to improve citizen access to information and services.

All three are a recognition of the need to move from costly paper-based processes and the management of maintenance of mountains of paper records to instead leverage information technology to re-engineer and improve the way we perform information management.

It’s funny, but for me it’s almost become a personal crusade to make better use of information technology to perform our mission and business of government more effectively, and I personally keep as little paper records, as possible–instead choosing to manage predominantly online–and it’s great.

Aside from having a cleaner office–no paper files, I enjoy all the benefits of electronic filing, search, and the ability to quickly share files with others in the office without having to rummage through a stack of papers 3 feet deep!

Working in some areas that are still paper intensive for case management and so on, I have taken on the mantra, which I frequency cite of “I hate paper!”

No, I don’t really hate it, but in order to change decades old manual and paper intensive processes, we need to exaggerate a little and tell ourselves and other we hate it, so we can help change the inefficient and costly status quo.

You can only imagine how surprised I was to read in The Atlantic (20 April 2012)–that “Paper: [Is] The Material of the Future.”

Essentially, the article touts the new developments with paper using nanotechnology to make it water-proof (although you can still write on it), magnetic, fluorescent, and even anti-bacterial.

Imagine paper that you can stick to your file cabinet, spill coffee on, light up the room with, and even keep you from getting sick–yes, that’s fairly impressive!

However, while these new features are wonderful indeed and will increase the usability of paper as well as improve records management of them, I do not want to see us get complacent with reducing our use of paper and making better use of technology.

Even with these cool nano-tech improvements to paper coming our way, I am still going to say, “I hate paper!”

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Earthworm)

>The Information Blanket

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On July 4, 1976–the 200th anniversary of our free and democratic nation, something incredible was happening in Uganda–Operation Entebbe, a rescue operation to free over a hundred hostages at Entebee Airport.

This rescue operation became the basis for the movie Operation Thunderbolt, one of of my favorite movies (aside from Rocky).

The movie portrays the heroic and miraculous raid at Entebbe Airport in Uganda by the IDF to save the hostages of Air France flight 139, with 248 passengers and 12 crew (the Jews were later upon landing separated from the non-Jews and held captive, while the others were released). IDF Commandos with only a week of planning and preparation, travelled 2,500 miles in a daring operation that resulted in the rescue of the 103 hostages in a 90 minutes raid. Only three hostages and the commander of the mission, Lt Col Yonatan Netanyahu (the older brother of the Prime Minister of Israel today) were killed in the battle.

Despite, Uganda’s support of the terrorists in this event 35 years ago (a long time yes, but still pretty awful), today to help innocent people of this country and others that can benefit, I write about…The Information Blanket.

BMB, an independent advertising consumer PR company launched The Information Blanket this month to fight infant mortality.

According to Fast Company (June 2011), the Blanket is targeted for a country like Uganda where “on average 77 of every 1,000 Ugandan babies will die before they reach their first birthday.”

The creative director of BMB worked with UNICEF to “determine which health facts would best educate mothers and hopefully prevent infant death” and then they designed The Information Blanket with easy to read and understand information such as:

1) Vaccinations–“Get your baby vaccinated: 6, 10, 14 weeks.”

2) Feeding–“Breast-feed 8-12 times a day.”

3) Doctors–“Don’t forget to schedule your doctor appointment.”

4) Temperature–“38 degrees Celsius.”

5) Growth–“Growth chart (months).”

6) Warnings–“Warning signs: unconsciousness, convulsions, fever, diarrhea, vomiting, eye discharge, poor appetite, fast breathing, dehydration.”

These days, when going paperless and making everything digital is practically a mantra, I find The Information Blanket not only an effort to help people save lives, but a refreshing reminder that information can be delivered in many ways. And whether on a rock, a tree, bits and bytes, or a blanket, getting information out there to people is education, growth, and life for humanity.

Also, the role of design in effective communications and information technology is critical. Apple gets it…heck, they practically invented it. The more we incorporate good design and innovation into our communications, the more effective they have a chance to be.

(Source Photo: BMB)