November 11, 2006
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Community Centric Service Methodology Glass Bead Games
Lobbying Congress on the Merits of the National Project
(still being slightly edited for typos: 11/11/2006 9:43 AM)
Roy said:
Because many of our desired outcomes and
suggested processes for improving government operations are similar, I will
stay on board, as long as the intention, process, content, and output of this
effort for a proposal (e.g., National Proposal for identifying “Who gets the money and
how much, and how well they performed with it”) meets the broader group’s intent, not
just your personal intent. In these matters, is seems that you are not an
unbiased decision-maker in your “dedication” to this effort, which is why this
group’s consensus decision-making based on a collaborative proposal process is
needed. If you want to enlist a group of free-thinkers into this effort,
many with the same 30+ years of experience as you and I, can you live with a proposal
that is not exactly what you currently intend it to be?
Reply,
Of course I have no attachment to
any particular part of a proposal. The difficulty of putting together a
comprehensive re-formulation of computer science and information science and my
particular short coming, opens me up to what I see is a
mis-characterization. This is absolutely my fault. I apologize
often for this.
I am expecting the proposal to
undergo needed transformation - but transformation that does not drop the
effort back under the control of IT vendors. A shift in economic power
will, in fact, punish those who are vested in the status quo, but they are free
to re-align to the new rules. Why not?
The work I have done can be
re-shaped in a way that is honest and has grounding in the natural
science. In the 3.2 M DARPA proposal (which was awarded to OntologyStream
Inc and then withdrawn due to a political interference by Cyc Corp) we have a
science committee of 20 respected scholars. It will be the task of these
kinds of committees to decide on specifics.
http://www.ontologystream.com/area2/KSF/KnowledgeScience.htm
I have no interest, for example, in punishing Cyc Corp since they acted in a way that was accepted politically at the time. They won the contract and I lost the contract. What is past is past.
A similar committee is
indicated in the 2004 architecture developed for US Customs:
http://www.bcngroup.org/area1/2005beads/GIF/RoadMap.htm#_The_advisory_committee
At core, I suggest that the
transformation will not be shaped by the kind of pure entrepreneurial
force now seen in US Federal CIO Council meeting. This suggestion is
based on an observation regarding why and how the current dysfunction in
government IT procurement developed and is currently supported.
A new utility function for
economic choice is suggested in:
"The Coming Revolution in
Information Science"
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/TaosDiscussion/index.htm
but there is a great deal of work to refine and make
correction to what I am presenting. I may have made some deep errors
myself.
The recent work I am offering is
specifically designed to say that at a certain date, all (what might be legally
seen by courts as being) waste or fraud be excused. In 1992 a private conversation
with an important program manager at DARPA allowed me to understand “his” observation
that 80% of all classification of DARPA funding results in areas related to
intelligence technology was due to someone simply covering up poor
decisions. This is wisdom that I intend
to continue to support.
It is far more important that those
government program managers and IT vendors who have profited dishonestly (even
if within a culture of dishonesty) be allowed to change behavior or to be
retired.
The utility function over how IT contracts are awarded and measured should be changed, and taken out of the current “full” control by the industry giants; so that transparency and the principles of "provable optimal modeling and processes" be applied.
My claim is that, since the War
has started, the levels of secrecy in IT contracts excuses increasing levels
of profiteering. This is merely a claim that should be investigated
by the new Congress. Do you not agree?
John Sowa has NEVER made a
commitment to the Nation Project, but his observations on the non-optimality of
RDF and OWL (from the W3C organization) is on the record. The fact is,
and John and many others agree, we are building poorly designed service
oriented architecture (SOA) based on very poor underlying principles. Excellent
alternatives like Topic Maps are pushed away. The outcome of this
behavior by the IT industry giants (OMG and others) is to advantage a system
designed to continue and unnecessary extract of public wealth for efforts
that are at core dishonest.
(Again this is conjecture and can
be made subject to specific investigations). The results may be to simply
change the IT procurement practices so that more objective human science begins
to control the greed of these IT industry giants. Has there been greed?
The key is clarity and transparency. The notion that I, or any one else that I draw strength from, is focused on intentional abuse is your notion; not mine. Your continuing focus on this will be polemical, and harmful to the effort, and thus will end your association with the project if not ended. I hope that you will see that harm is created by persisting on this issue.
I am grateful that you are bringing
this up at this time, so that the position of the group sponsoring the National
Project develops branding language that protects itself from attacks that are
based on the arguments that you are putting forward. These attacks will be countered by specific statements of
principle, and you are welcome to write these statements and submit the
statements to a Board of Advisors.
I actually disagree that this is
reflective of the past, or is indicative of the intentions of the
BCNGroup. You have your right to do what you wish, but I will persist in
characterizing this position as a type of polemic, being itself (in my opinion) not clear in nature.
I do agree that this is an issue
that we need to be clear on.
I am for amnesty over all specific instances of
(found) waste and fraud in IT procurement based on the conjecture that the
entire academic community is jointly responsible for the "error"
leading to disciplines like artificial intelligence and software engineering. I
assert that this shared responsibility lead to waste and fraud, and so assert
also that the individuals actually involved may be excused in all but the most
glaring of instances.
I assume that you would agree
with the founding principles of the Knowledge Sharing Core.... but if you
do not I would consider making modifications after some funding is established
to actually build out something like the system outlined at
http://www.bcngroup.org/area2/knowledgeSharingFoundation.htm
I look forward to a
collaboration, or to the decision to not collaborate based on what you perceive
as your personal interests.
Paul Prueitt