Importance Of Enterprise Architecture
GCN –
After the last budget cycle, Richard Burk could clearly see the correlation between the maturity of an agency’s enterprise architecture and how well it controlled spending.
Burk, the Office of Management and Budget’s chief architect, found agencies that were successfully using their EAs—those that scored at least a 3 out of 5 in OMB’s assessment—spent less of their discretionary budget on IT than other agencies.
Hutchinson on Scenarios
Art Hutchinson expounds on the benefits of divergent scenarios for viable strategic planning –
This is one reason that much traditional “Michael Porter style” strategic planning has fallen short: it requires crisp definitions of industry boundaries in order to yield meaningful insights. Define things too narrowly and you get whacked from outside (‘best car in it’s class’ syndrome). Industries resist bounding (arguably more now than in the past). For example, what industry does the iPhone occupy? Yet if one defines boundaries too broadly one gets un-actionable mush. What’s left? A need for divergent scenarios that empower management teams to think systemically across and around boundaries–recognizing but not being hemmed in by them. The goal: strategic resilience whatever may come.
Moroccans In Iraq
WaPo – Moroccans attracted to the war in Iraq as demonstrative of the globalization of black economy recruitment –
About two dozen men from Tetouan and nearby towns in the Rif Mountains have traveled to Iraq in the past 18 months to volunteer as fighters or suicide bombers, according to local residents and officials. Moroccan authorities said the men were recruited by international terrorist networks affiliated with al-Qaeda that have deepened their roots in North Africa since the invasion of Iraq four years ago.
On JetBlue
Neeleman is handling the situation well although it never should have happened. As stated in the NYT a large chunk of the problems stem from just a bad information platform which spawned cascading failures –
The basic problem, he said, was JetBlue’s communication system: the ice storm had left a large portion of the airline’s 11,000 pilots and flight attendants far from where they needed to be to operate the planes, and JetBlue lacked the trained staff to find them and tell them where to go. Prior to last week, JetBlue had never had so many people out of position.
Someone dropped the ball early in the game and did not think about information technology or scalability.
Iraqi PMC Golden Era Ending
Pelton –
Slogger is getting reports that the new round of RFP’s for major security and training contracts in Iraq have a new wrinkle: Complete handover to Iraqis at end of contract.
The contract specs could herald the beginning of the end for the golden years of Americans and foriegn security contractors in Iraq.