To: DC Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority
Hello:
I've been watching and studying the DC situation for quite a while. Although not a DC resident, I believe I understand and do appreciate the citizenship issues such as representation and Mayoral authority. Also, through my government and commercial experiences as a financial manager and analyst, an information resources manager, a business engineer, a systems manager, an organization developer, and a social science enthusiast, I can see the issues related to the District's management and Federal administrative status.
My suggestion is that the District CFO, City Administrator, and Information Resources leadership provide an online "District Management Directory" to aid the District's efforts to improve itself. This could be accomplished with the sponsorship of the Authority (Chairman, Executive Director, and members), and hopefully with the endorsement of the DC government (Mayor, Council, and Agency), the DC Congressional Delegate, and citizens. This management directory would be used in securely polling, pooling, and sharing data and other information relevant to the District's management and constituents. It is described below.
A. The management directory is a multifaceted, methodological synthesis of recent advances in technology, processes, business, and culture. It is a capability that reaches across multiple technologies, multiple processes, and multiple business functions, encompassing the viewpoints and involvement of multiple constituencies. I am available to present and discuss this capability with you. My qualifications are available on request. I am willing to personally support you in this as an individual who owns the capability's design, or within the auspices of a contract with my employer, who has the resources to implement the design for you, to operate it, and to maintain and extend it as required.
B. From an executive management viewpoint, some of the benefits of such a management directory are: 1) it could serve as a hub for recording, seeking, and relating information about things of interest to the District's Authority, government, businesses, and citizens; 2) it could serve as a connector to begin linking the variety of existing information systems used to transact District business, to analyze its activity and performance, and to inform, involve, and coordinate its multiple interrelated activities and constituents; 3) it could serve as the integrating foundation for future transactional, analytical, or coordination capabilities; 4) it could serve as a means of increasing involvement and interaction of District constituents, helping them to securely organize and coordinate for their priority issues; 5) it could serve as a means of focusing District Authority, government, businesses, and organized groups on customer satisfaction rather than internal products, processes, or structure.
C. It has been my experience that culturally, a "horizontal" integration (.e., crossfunctional) capability such as this management directory seldom receives initial and sustained support from local political leadership or operations managers, who are often required to operate from a "vertical" perspective of strong autonomy, functional focus, and nearterm performance. Conversely, it has been my experience that it does receive strong and sustained support from corporate leadership and financial managers who usually have a comprehensive and longerterm viewpoint and enduring interest in a mechanism to economically support enterprise performance measurement and accountability. I perceive that the DCFRA now has the mission and the clout to build and use a management directory to its fullest extent, in keeping with its charter and its drive to resolve its programmatic issues.
D. Technically, the management directory would apply standard commercial Web technology (Internet/intranets, network file systems, databases, messaging systems, security systems) in a new way. I speculate there are sufficient information technology resources available within the District's current operations to build this capability at low additional labor and materiel costs.
E. Financially, the major cost of acquiring this capability would be for data compilation and organization, and for implementation of the management directory's interface, processing capacity, and maintenance functions. As an initial estimate, I submit that most or all of this implementation effort could be accomplished within 4 months using my design and commercially available products, with an initial outlay of less than $200K of labor and $75K of hardware/software/service, and then subsequent annual costs of $250K for labor and $50K for hardware/software/service. Without my design, the implementation of a management directory for the District could cost significantly more, with a high probability of less capable results. Note that the initial and sustainment costs could possibly be offset by use of comparable existing District resources (e.g., DCFRA and District staff and technical resources). Additional costs would come into play if extending the capacity or functionality of the management directory beyond its initial design described here and its reach beyond the available District intranet and the Internet.
F. From a security and privacy viewpoint, the security mechanism would include use of modern digitalcertificate and directory technology to reliable identify every management directory entry and its privileges, and would control access through the use of permissions assigned to the entries and their various combinations. In this way, only people and processes with the assigned privileges in their certificate have permission to create, read, modify, or delete management directory entries and their combinations, much like a robust physical security system would control access to installations, buildings, rooms, equipment, systems, files, and resources like supplies or data. The management directory's security would be largely decentralized and distributed through a modern delegated "trust" system, governed by policy and implemented by technology.
G. In approaching the implementation, I offer the District the free, perpetual use of my copyrighted design and my plans in building and operating this management directory capability. The management directory design is a subset of my lifelong efforts in public and commercial service to assess, analyze, and design a Total Enterprise Management and Membership (TEMM) support system. TEMM has been fully designed, and partially implemented (awaiting recently achieved technology advances and standards). TEMM is designed for use by any organization or group of organizations, of any type, on any scale, in any distribution.
H. Operationally, the management directory would consist of six integrated "catalogs" containing entries about objects of interest to the District and its constituencies, and the "profiles" which describe the relationships between the catalog entries. Each catalog's management would be delegated to different District functional leaders, who would be responsible and accountable for its completeness, accuracy, and timeliness. To allay concerns about appropriate use of the management directory and appropriate contents and security, regular and adhoc inspections and audits, from multiple perspectives including recognized privacy and civil liberties groups, would be encouraged and enabled.
I. A management directory would provide the numbered features, functions, and benefits shown below.
Features.
1. Location Catalog.
Its function is to contain and present categories and inventories of 1) place names, 2) postal addresses, 3) network (voice and data) addresses, and 4) corresponding geospatial coordinates, with possible extensions such as displaying selected objects on various 5) maps and 6) engineering drawings.
Its benefit is in 1) providing a comprehensive site for lookingup and selecting/acquiring consistent and maintained Districtrelevant location data for management and public use. Future benefits could include linking the location catalog to geographic information systems and engineering drawing systems to allow automated entry and display of objects in their geospatial relationships.
2. Organization Catalog.
Its function is to contain and present categories and inventories of 1) formal organizations (District and Federal government, commercial and nonprofit) and 2) informal organizations (committees, teams, groups), including public information regarding its 3) leadership, 4) contact points and 5) locations (selected from the Location Catalog). It would also contain finelygrained secure and controlled access to information such as an organization's 6) mission, 7) vision, 8) goals, 9) performance measures, and 10) strategies and information about which organizations are its 11) customers, 12) suppliers, 13) partners, and 14) authorities.
Its benefits include: 1) providing a comprehensive site for lookingup and selecting/acquiring consistent and maintained Districtrelevant organization data for management and public use; 2) providing a means to query and display information related to the distribution of an organization across its location(s). Future benefits could include display of organizational information on maps and engineering drawings with combinations of place name, postal code, network address, or geospatial coordinates.
3. Work Unit Catalog.
Its function is to contain and present categories and inventories of 1) offices, 2) positions, 3) teams, and 4) roles, detailing their 5) duties with appropriate 6) contact information (telephones, fax, email), within the above organizations at various locations selected from the above Organization Catalog.
Its benefits include: 1) providing a comprehensive site for looking up and selecting/acquiring consistent and maintained Districtrelevant work unit data for management and public use; 2) providing a means to query and display information related to the distribution of a work unit across it's organization(s) and location(s); 3) the equivalent of an integrated organization chart and official telephone, fax, and email directory. Future benefits could include display of work unit information on maps and engineering drawings, by organizational criteria, with appropriate location details.
4. Function Catalog.
Its function is to contain and present categories and inventories of 1) work unit business functions, detailing 2) their implementing programs, and in turn 3) their implementing projects. The Function Catalog identifies "what" is done within a work unit. This includes a work unit breakout of responsibility, authority, products (goods or services) and known byproducts, recurring event schedules, and project tasks and deliverables. Additionally, the Function Catalog would provide the means for 4) identifying and 5) linking 6) functional policy, 7) baseline operations (functions/programs), 8) new initiatives (projects), and 9) functional plans to intra and interorganizational missions, visions, goals, performance measures, and strategies.
Its benefits include: 1) providing a comprehensive site for looking up and selecting/acquiring consistent and maintained Districtrelevant function data for management and public use; 2) providing a means to query and display information related to the distribution of a function across it's work unit(s), organization(s) and location(s); 3) the equivalent of an organizational missions, functions, responsibility, authority and products directory. Future benefits could include display of function information on maps and engineering drawings, by work unit, organization, or location criteria.
5. Process Catalog.
Its function is to contain and present categories and inventories of 1) functional, program, and project processes, detailing 2) their stakeholder work units, by organization and location. The Process Catalog serves as a 3) comprehensive intra and interorganizational process model which identifies and documents "how" a function, program, or project task is performed, whether manually or with various degrees of automation, with breakouts by function(s), work unit(s), organization(s), and location(s). Additional details include 4) process models decomposed to economical levels of detail, using a variety of processing modeling methods and tools. The Process Catalog would provide the mechanism for: identifying which processes and functions would benefit from: 5) electronic data interchange (EDI) between automated processes, 6) electronic commerce (EC) between manual or electronically enhanced commercial and measuredvalue transactions, 7) business process reengineering (BPR), and 8) total quality management (TQM). It would enable the tracking and planning of EDI, EC, BPR, and TQM opportunities to specific function(s), work unit(s), organization(s), and location(s).
Its benefits include: 1) providing a comprehensive site for looking up and selecting/acquiring consistent and maintained Districtrelevant process data for management and public use; 2) providing a means to query and display information related to the distribution of a process across it's function(s), work unit(s), organization(s) and location(s). Future benefits could include display of process information on maps and engineering drawings, by function, work unit, organization, or location criteria.
6. Resource Catalog.
Its function is to contain and present categories and inventories of 1) accountable resources managed by the District. This would include 2) mapping resource quantities and descriptive qualities to their 3) budget and 4) performance plan roles as process, functional, work unit, and organizational inputs, controls, outputs, or mechanisms 5) (ICOM). The Resource Catalog would be managed by delegating responsibility for specific resource categories. The resource categories are: life forms (e.g., persons, other animals, plants), funds, information, skill sets, materiel, facilities, services, space, time, and energy.
Its benefits include: 1) providing a comprehensive site for looking up and selecting/acquiring consistent and maintained Districtrelevant resource data for management and public use; 2) providing a means to query and display information related to the distribution of a resource (whether contributing to or resulting from a process) across it's process(es), function(s), work unit(s), organization(s) and location(s). Future benefits could include display of resource information on maps and engineering drawings, by process, function, work unt, organization, or location criteria.
7. Current Composition and Distribution Context.
As a result of implementing features 1 through 6, the functionality to display management context is achieved. In the same way that the successively higher numbered catalogs could look back to the lower numbered catalogs to show the current distribution of a catalog entry across the District, the management directory would also show the current composition of an entry in terms of entries in the higher numbered catalogs. E.g., a process (#5) can display its component resources (#6), as well as its distribution across functions (#4), work units (#3), organizations (#2), and locations (#1).
The benefits of this include: 1) providing a comprehensive site for looking up and selecting/acquiring consistent and maintained Districtrelevant current context data for management and public use, 2) providing a means to query and display information related to the current distribution and composition of any management directory entry. Future benefits could include the display of context information on maps and engineering drawings.
8. Life Cycle Management.
Building on the functionality provided by features 1 through 7 above, the context of a management directory entry can be 1) given a "time frame" functionality, enabling the management of the 2) past, 3) present, 4) proposed, 5) projected, and 6) planned context. The management directory then becomes capable of 7) tracking the history and current performance of a managed entry, and also proivides a means of projecting/proposing and planning an entry's 8) future management.
The benefits include: 1) providing a comprehensive site for looking up and selecting/acquiring consistent and maintained Districtrelevant life cycle data for management and public use, 2) providing a means to query and display information related to the chronology, distribution, and composition of any management directory entry. Future benefits could include the display of life cycle information on maps and engineering drawings.
I hope all involved benefit through this suggestion.
Roy Roebuck
Sr. Business Engineer
(Business Engineering and Improvement, Virtual Team Consulting)
7035982351