On Timetables (Jim Lindgren on Volokh.com)

"Jim Lindgren, at Volokh.com says:

When People Urge a Timetable, What are They Talking About?—

I frankly admit that I have no expertise in military strategy, yet I have been feeling particularly dense lately. When I read the calls for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, I can't for the life of me figure out what the heck they are talking about.

The time to talk about a timetable for withdrawal is when the mission is over. Then you start asking: Why are we still there? Should we set a timetable for withdrawal? But our troops are sorely needed right now. Things are still pretty dodgy, as Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy surely realize..."

I don't know much about military strategy either, but as a (retired) bureaucrat I was familiar with doing timetables.

"Timetable" is a metaphor--a railroad timetable has three features; the destination, the sequence of stops, and the scheduled times of arrival and departure at each. My timetables started with Congress passing a law for a farm program--we had to sign up farmers and pay them X billion by date Y. To create the timetable you had to work backward from that destination.

The problem with the timetable metaphor (the "roadmap" has similar problems) is that Americans don't agree on goals and the situation. What is "winning the war"? Is the goal a democracy like Switzerland (also divided by religion and ethnicity) because we are dealing with a straightforward conflict with remnants of Hussein's regime, that will end with the killing or capture of the insurgents? Is the goal simply a state that is not friendly to Islamic fundamentalists, because Iraq is currently a battleground in the worldwide war on terror? Could we live with a Shia dictator like Mubarak or Musharraf?

Or are we dealing with an incipient Sunni-Shia civil war, somewhere on the continuum between the Catholic-Protestant clashes in Northern Ireland since 1968, the Balkans during the 90's and the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka? Can the US successfully be a neutral third party or will we end up like the British Army in Ulster?

If statistics show the number of insurgents increasing, is that because foreigners are flowing in for jihad, because Sunnis are getting pissed off at the disorder and destruction and holding the US responsible or because we're getting better at counting?

I suggest that if Jim Lindgren and the Democrats agreed on the answers to these questions they'd agree on whether a timetable is wise. By the way, Democrats could point to President Nixon for a precedent in setting a timetable in the midst of combat. In his national speech on November 3, 1969

" We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable.[emphasis added] This withdrawal will be made from strength and not from weakness. As South Vietnamese forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater. "

Alternatively, a cynic might say Kennedy et.al. is simply what Congressional opponents of a President do to score points. Everyone likes timetables, it's a quick sound bite without taking a position where you might be wrong. After all, not only did the Republicans beat up on Clinton about a timetable for Bosnia, they put it in the law. (See Section 1205 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 1998 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c105:6:./temp/~c105yKpRva:: Also, see Senator Hutchison http://hutchison.senate.gov/ccbosn2.htm ) It flows from the Constitution--Congress can posture and pout while the President has to exercise energy in managing war and foreign policy, just as the founders intended.

Or, going back to bureaucracy, one could look to the latent function of my timetables. They were distributed to our field offices. Field employees liked them, I was never sure whether it was the information or because they gave the impression bigshots in Washington knew what they were doing (always a dubious assumption to field level bureaucrats). From that standpoint, Democrats have little faith in Bush, just as Republicans had little faith in Clinton, so timetables seem useful.

Or, it's simply a rhetorical device, like the pose of not understanding an issue in order better to attack one's opponents.

Bureaucratic Chutzpah--Catch 22

Re the post on bureaucratic chutzpah: It's been decades since I read Catch 22 (is it still popular). My memory is that "catch-22" fits my previous discussion--two bureaucracies with separate rules intersecting. One bureaucracy is the Army Air Force (see James Q. Wilson's Bureaucracy for the view that the military is just another bureaucracy). It says--pilots must be sane. Makes sense to me. The other bureaucracy is the medicos. It says--anyone who fears combat missions and wants out is sane. Also makes sense, at least on first impression. Put the two together and you have catch-22.

Bureaucratic Chutzpah

Israel Seizes Palestinian Land in Jerusalem Cut Off by Barrier (washingtonpost.com)

"Israel has quietly seized large tracts of Jerusalem land owned by Palestinian residents of the West Bank after they were cut off from their property by Israel's separation barrier, attorneys for the landowners said.

The land was taken after the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided several months ago to enforce a long-dormant law that allows Israel to seize lands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out during the 1948-49 war that followed the establishment of the Jewish state. "

Based on the report, this strikes me as a early contender for bureaucratic chutzpah of the year. The implication in the article is that the "landowner" is present, but legally "absentee" because he can't cross the separation barrier. (You remember the definition of "chutzpah"--the son kills his parents then begs for mercy because he's an orphan.)

But, what may really be going on is two different bureaucracies at work--one the Israeli military/security system determining the path and rules for the barrier and the other the justice system rousing* itself to enforce a law. That would be consistent with the chutzpah definition: we have rules for what an "orphan" is and how an orphan is to be treated, we also have rules for handling murderers. Put the two sets of rules together and you have a joke, the sort of joke that often occurs at the intersection of two bureaucracies.

(*Update: The New York Times has more detail. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/international/middleeast/25mideast.html?oref=login
Apparently "rousing" isn't correct, the law is being stretched. )

(Updated II: The NYTimes says Israel's Attorney General has nixed this. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/international/middleeast/02mideast.html?oref=login

Making Sense of the News

[Warning–this piece applies stereotypes from my school days, close to 50 years ago. A nod to the late Meg Greenfield, Washington Post editor, who observed all Washington was variation on high school.]

Items from today's (2-1-05) NYTimes and Post: Bernie Ebbers is on trial, immature teenage brains don't mature until the mid-20's, religions compete for adherents, and the former science editor of the NYTimes recounts her unpleasant experiences as a woman in male-dominated science.

Scientists have shown by MRI's that teenage brains are awash in a sea of emotions, ungoverned by wisdom and thought, highly susceptible to peer influences, aiming for eminence and distinction, yet dependent on the comfort of the group. Now they're saying we don't mature until 25 or so (some people, humorists especially are never mature).

Mr. Ebbers is reported to have denied any accounting expertise by pointing out that he was a phys ed major in college. This is intended to distance himself from responsibility for the accounting frauds that took MCI-Worldcom into bankruptcy.

Take yourself back to the 60's–the young Bernie Ebbers in high school is one of the jocks, who are the apex of the social pyramid. The jocks look down on the brains, who are interested in such things as math and science. Some of the jocks have brains, some of the brains can jock, but to occupy safe and secure social niches they minimize similarities and accentuate the differences. The male brains, being in a lower position, then become macho, although in a suitably subtle way, in pursuing their interest in math and science, thereby marking off their turf from being invaded by females. (50 years ago the female brains were genetically programed towards marriage, that mutations have since disabled that gene and the one that made females throw from the elbow.)

The women, who've been discouraged from math and science all along, have been winnowed down to a small number. That means the theory of the "tipping point" applies, the intellectual neighborhood has gone to the dogs, and the few remaining women flee to more comfortable intellectual pursuits.

Years pass, and Bernie (do we use the diminutive at his request, or to express our own resentment) has money and position. But he's still maintaining the distinction between him–he's the glorious leader able to hire and fire the brains, who know those accounting mysteries. Real men don't count, they lead. (Thinking of the new personnel system proposed for the Homeland Security department–wouldn't Ebbers have done Sullivan's performance evaluation, so wouldn't he be responsible regardless of how well he understands accounting? )

Take a wider picture–the jocks and nerds and women have settled into ruts, but some miss something, something that a church, a religious belief can fill. Searching for an answer, they look for churches with clear identities, as clear as the identities of the groups in high school. One way for a church to make a mark is to capitalize on anxieties caused by scientific and technological advances. Where some on the left go for radical environmentalism and opposition to genetic modifications, others take the course of attacking Darwin and evolution. It's a rewarding course–there's no need to give up any of the benefits of modern science. But it's easy to take modern science as claiming the high ground of knowledge, and very human to believe anything that will undermine that claim.

The Definition of a Truly Libertarian Society

The definition of a truly libertarian society is surely one where escaping from prison is not a crime:

Prisoners Undercut Mexican Drug Crackdown (washingtonpost.com): "To the dismay of many law enforcement officials, escaping from prison is not a crime in Mexico. As long as the escapee does not commit another crime while escaping -- such as assaulting a guard -- there is no penalty. As one Supreme Court justice has explained, 'the person who tries to escape is seeking liberty, and that is deeply respected in the law.'"

Doubts about DHS New Personnel System

Civil Service System on Way Out at DHS (washingtonpost.com):

From Wednesday's Post
"The Bush administration unveiled a new personnel system for the Department of Homeland Security yesterday that will dramatically change the way workers are paid, promoted, deployed and disciplined -- and soon the White House will ask Congress to grant all federal agencies similar authority to rewrite civil service rules governing their employees.

The new system will replace the half-century-old General Schedule, with its familiar 15 pay grades and raises based on time in a job, and install a system that more directly bases pay on occupation and annual performance evaluations, officials said. The new system has taken two years to develop and will require at least four more to implement, they said."

I've reservations about such changes. The world little remembers the Civil Service reform efforts of Jimmy Carter, but maybe I'm not of this world. The Senior Executive Service was part of it (Not the world, Carter's reform). Never having reached that exalted level, I'm not sure, but I don't think it fulfills the promises made for it. Another part, now scrapped, was a reform of the merit pay system, less far-reaching than the DHS system but subject to some of the same problems:

1. Do the personnel (sorry, human resources) people in HSD buy into it? That's not clear. "Not invented here" is a real problem everywhere.
2. Conflicting priorities--if you're a line manager in HSD trying to focus on your mission, you may well resent diverting your attention to learning the ins and outs of some new fangled idea, particularly if your employees start worrying about the process and it looks to you as if the new system won't improve your ability to manage. People find reasons not to change.
   
3. Reluctance to judge--I never saw a manager or employee who welcomed a discussion of strengths and weaknesses. Maybe reality TV shows like American Idol prove modern youths are different. Maybe Judge Chertoff can create a culture in DHS of frankness without recrimination. Maybe there's a tooth fairy. The Civil Service System is not bad, it just doesn't work. The words on paper are good, the actions in reality are something different. The challenge for DHS is to achieve some congruence between paper system (where "paper" includes "computers") and what happens every day.
4. Lack of performance standards--one of the reasons we have government perform a function instead of free enterprise is the lack of clear standards.
   

Maybe the changes will work as claimed. More likely after 20 years or so we'll find there's some improvements and some problems. Or possibly, DHS and the reform effort will require more reforms, more reorganizations.

Big Software Projects Fail

Note the following is not unique to government. I firmly believe that organizations of people are more similar than different.

The FBI ran into problems with its big software project, leading to an op-ed in

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Does Not Compute

"Research by the Standish Group, a software research and consulting firm, illustrates the troubled fates of most big software initiatives. In 1994, researchers found, only 16 percent were completed on time, on budget and fulfilling the original specifications. Nearly a third were canceled outright, and the remainder fell short of their objectives. More than half of the cost overruns amounted to at least 50 percent of the original budget. Of the projects that went off schedule, almost half took more than twice as long as originally planned. A follow-up survey in 2003, however, showed that corporate software projects were doing better; researchers found that the percentage of successful projects had risen to 34 percent."

I was involved in several such projects at USDA (i.e., large computer systems covering multiple offices and agencies). That led to my formulating Harshaw's rule one (you never do it right the first time). Other factors for failure:

1. the culture gap between information technology (IT) (used to be EDP, then ADP) types and the operational types who really call the shots.
2. McConnell's rule -- consider the goals of a project: cheapness, speed, quality. It's easy to achieve one, difficult to achieve two, and all but impossible to achieve all three. (I think I stole that from Steve McConnell's "Code Complete", published in 1993.) It fits my experience, although Dan Goldin, the former NASA head had the motto: Faster, Better, Cheaper.
3. hubris. See the classic tragedies. See "A Bridge Too Far." See the Spruce Goose.
   

Harshaw's Rule One

Over my years in USDA I developed a set of rules for myself. The one I used most often is:

"You never do it right the first time".

My point here is that this is my first blog.

Richard Hatch and the IRS

Score one for the good guys. Richard Hatch, the first million dollar winner on "Survivor" is being hauled into court by the IRS for failure to pay taxes on his winnings. (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0118051hatch1.html)

I don't like what the economists call "free riders", so I'm happy. But the Washington Post's Richard Leiby (The Reliable Source column) played it for laughs, implying Hatch was stupid not to realize that the IRS watches Survivior and checks up on winnings. He made an assumption (one of my pet peeves) which may be wrong. I hope it's wrong. I hope we aren't paying any bureaucrats to watch TV to catch winners of quiz and reality shows. Put aside the question of what would be a fair salary for such duty. (Full disclosure, I've never watched a reality show.) As a bureaucrat (retired) I think the fairest and most effective tax collecting system is just that, a system, ideally computerized.

If IRS doesn't have TV watchers, how was Hatch caught? Possibly an informer, which may be hard to believe, as apparently he's the most lovable of men. But an informer might even pick up a percentage of the take (I'm no expert on tax law). I hope that wasn't the case--there may be instances where only an insider who turns his coat can catch a law violator, but they should be rare.

I hope what happened is the IRS systems worked. The network (or "Survivor Entertainment Group") included the payment in its report to IRS, along with all the other payments of salaries and bonuses that would qualify as income to the recipient. When Mr. Hatch's 1040 came in, I hope an IRS system matched it against the network report and found the discrepancy.

Of course the media has little interest in such issues, which can build public mistrust of our hardworking bureaucrats.

(Faceless bureaucrats aren't paranoid--they have real enemies.)