Endless Knots

Superstorm Sandy collides with Supermess LIPA

"Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area."

Remember that famous line from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? In case you've forgotten, here's the awful story.

The week after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Aaron Broussard, then-president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, sobbed on national television as he spoke to the late "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, recounting the death of the mother of his county’s emergency services director. Eva Rodrigue, 92, along with perhaps thirty or more residents, drowned in St. Rita’s Nursing Home, after what Broussard described as days of bureaucratic promises broken.

He ticked off the list of the guilty:

“Were we abandoned by the federal government? Absolutely we were…nobody came here, sir. Nobody came. The federal government didn't come. The Red Cross didn't come. I'll give you a list of people that didn't come here, sir, and I was here…Did inefficiencies, did bureaucracy commit murder here? Absolutely, it did.”

We've yet to hear that bureaucracy is being charged with murder following Superstorm Sandy but the reports of massive dysfunction at the Long Island Power Authority certainly suggest organizational culpability. Consider this from Danny Hakim, Patrick McGeehan, and Michael Moss's piece in Tuesday's NY Times:

Customers have been exasperated not only by a lack of power, but also by the authority’s inability to communicate basic information. Long Islanders have recounted tales of phones unanswered at authority offices, of wildly inaccurate service maps and of broken promises to dispatch repair crews.

It gets worse (or is still worse--as of this writing 8,000 are still without power more than two weeks after the storm) and it's really echo-y of what Broussard said 8 years ago:

“Resources came late,” said Frank P. Petrone, chief executive of the Town of Huntington and a former official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “When they came, there was no management to utilize those resources effectively. And it took 10 days for them to get their act together.”

Also from Petrone who tried to plan ahead only to discover that LIPA's crews didn't communicate when they finally arrived:

“The upper management couldn’t communicate with the middle management,” he said. “The middle management couldn’t communicate with the crews. And finally, when we had sufficient crews coming in — resources that should have been arranged before — they came in and had very little direction and they were flabbergasted at the condition of the infrastructure, the wiring, the entire system.”

A quick look at LIPA's publicly available 13-page PDF organizational chart shows 3 executive-level vacancies as of August 2012. Add to that the recent resignation of its COO and LIPA's leadership team resembles Swiss cheese more than an organization worthy of public confidence and trust.

Lastly, we arrive at news that reeks of the BP spill in the beleagured Gulf of Mexico. It turns out that LIPA is a shell company that outsources its operations. Remember all the finger pointing after the BP spill as it became nearly impossible to know which company was responsible for what, who was accountable for what, and who ultimately made the bad decisions that led to the spill? Lots of outsourcing. Here's what Reuters reported on Tuesday of this week:

LIPA, however, is a state-owned shell company that has only about 100 employees [all of whose positions are represented on their publicly available org chart]. It has outsourced the operation of its electric system to a unit of British power company National Grid PLC, which has said it is responsible for implementing LIPA's restoration plan.

Outsourcing is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that if you outsource, leadership must be fixated on clear lines of communication and have complete confidence in the competence of outside organization(s). And in yet another twist to the story, National Grid is "set to hand operations over to a unit of New Jersey power company Public Service Enterprise Group Inc in 2014," according to a Nov. 6, 2012, Reuters story. Although our research on this is still to be completed, it's likely that National Grid currently has massive outsourcing operations itself. That, coupled with the planned turnover of operations to yet another company in a short time (PSEG), makes the accountability/commitment-to-excellence worth questioning.

Given LIPA's empty leadership and problematic outsourcing, it is no wonder that a historic Frankenstorm is causing so much suffering. Going forward, it would be interesting to use OrgScope to fully analyze LIPA's (and/or National Grid's) organizational structure, examine lines of communication, and provide recommendations for transforming LIPA from a dangerous disconnected bureacracy to a fluid, communication-rich storm-proof network.

 

 

 

 

Mapping the president's org chart: Old post gets new life

Other long-time bloggers will recognize the phenom: a post written years ago suddenly gets lots of hits. I suppose it's no surprise why this post, written a month after the 2008 election, would be popular right now: "For Pres-elect Obama: Create transparent digital org chart."

Jeff Stamps, who invented OrgScope, the software that allows for digital mapping of complex organizations (all OrgScope posts at this link), took the lead in writing this post -- and he (not I, credit truly due to him) did the hard work of mapping the then-incoming Obama administration. In a few hours (we hope this doesn't drag on--it's election day in the US, all non-American readers), it will be time to update this chart again. We published this as a memo to the transition team, encouraging a style of open governing that would make it immensely easier for people to navigate government -- both those in the government and those needing government.

We've reprised these ideas more recently in regard to crisis mapping.

And while I'm on the subject of a single citizen/thinker/business person taking responsibility for researching and publishing information just because he knew it was important, I also want to point to Jeff's detailed work on following the money of the TARP (remember TARP?) funding back when the Bush administration first started bailing out the financial institutions.

OK. It's election day. What do I think? We need to update this chart with information for the turnover in the Obama administration that begins tomorrow.

 

Mapping the "New Citizens"

Thanks to our friends at TechSoup Global (see Glenn Fajardo’s, “Building Better Solutions Together, Faster”), we have been inspired to take a closer look at what’s happening with the “new citizens” movement, a grassroots effort that’s spawned its own ecology of adherents, events, organizations – and truly valuable output.

Known by different tags, including Gov 2.0 and civic engagement, and typically manifesting as, variously, hackathons, hackfests, startup weekends, and codefests, the idea is pretty simple: people interested in solving social/civic problems and who, bless them, possess advanced technology skills, come together for a time-bound event during which they take on thorny problems (see Random Hacks of Kindness, for example) and quickly turn out apps, platforms, and technology solutions that traditional IT organizations might labor over for long periods of time at great expense or perhaps never even consider. Consider just a few examples of events where savvy, energetic developers put their heads together to solve difficult problems in innovative ways:

• The Data Science Hackathon in April 2012 when some “200 data scientists from more than 10 cities around the world spent 24 hours in London designing solutions to help improve the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Air Quality Index,” according to Jessica Meyer Maria’s article in GovTech.
• Code for Oakland, now in its second year and part of the Code for America network, which tackled, among other things developing “a web helper” to assist kids missing class in getting caught up on work they’ve missed (see Angie Chang’s “Code For Oakland: The Most Diverse Hackathon Ever” on the Forbes site).
• Startup Weekend Seattle Gov, which spawned many good ideas, including the winner, WhichBus, which tells you, among other things, which bus to take.

Since so many of these efforts are cropping up, we thought it might be helpful to begin mapping a bit of this territory (we use OrgScope for this; here’s a link to additional OrgScope posts). Here is a first pass at mapping some of the groups:

Another cut maps efforts in a particular city, in this case Code for America’s 2012 work in Detroit:

Note that one focus area is Access to Transportation which, as a quick web search indicates, is similar to what is going on in Seattle where WhichBus won a Startup Weekend competition.

This is one of those posts that could go on forever, tracking down all of the cool things that are unfolding and discussing the seemingly endless possibilities for bringing in random developers to solve really tough stuff in record time.

If one goal of these collaborative efforts is to publicize and address complex issues, organizational maps can help organize and strengthen the terrain. The less isolated a network is, the better chance it has at succeeding. Why risk creating multiple, disconnected silos when an organizational map can help create a more elegant, highly-connected network of networks.

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Organizational mapping, crisis mapping & disaster response

My colleague, NetAge Director Doug Carpenter, recently brought my attention to the need for better organizational mapping during major crises. This led us to take a look at Haiti, where the need for understanding who's doing what and how they connect to one another remains intense more than two years after the devastating earthquake. We believe there's broad applicability given the state of crisis/disaster preparedness and response. Here's our thinking.

 

It’s well known that crises give birth to self-organizing networks. In the panic that follows an earthquake, for example, people both on the scene – and those empathizing from a distance – step outside the constraints of their normal routines and act to set things right. Reports on how effective these networks can be are legion, whether we’re talking about the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, or the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan.

In each situation, people quickly improvised to bring together vital information that could aid in the response. And they were effective: they put people back in touch with their families, rebuilt roads, moved food, and saved lives.

Yet the vast quantities of data that were available to assist in making these efforts more effective also served to hinder their success. We have tons of data but the systems in which that information is encased rarely talk to one another. Likewise, individuals who are experts in particular data sets are hampered in their ability to look across information domains.

One significant challenge then in crisis preparation, management, and response is how to bring meaningful and interrelated data together in ways that can be easily seen, used, and analyzed both in the immediate response and during the long-term recovery.

Organizational mapping can serve as “ground-level truth” -- a starting point for bringing together vital information. For example, an organizational map can be created to depict the U.N. presence in Haiti:

 

 

Any node in the network can be placed at the center and can be represented and described in multiple ways – who leads it, who works for it, what each person’s role is, what its purpose and goals are, who the organization serves, where the people and the organizations are located, and what they’ve accomplished.

We can also draw lines that reflect the organizations’ relationships to one another thus providing a map of the UN’s organizational geography in Haiti and a glimpse into the relative strength of this expansive network.

Next we can add other organizations, making a dent in capturing the thousands of NGOs operating in Haiti.

From here, we can layer other networks and alliances such as the web of those responsible for providing food, health care services, and infrastructure development. We can shine the light on a   specific network or look at them all at once.

Visualization is the first step. Next comes the ability to navigate the organizational terrain since the data reflect a range of invaluable information. Want to find a plant-disease expert in Port-au-Prince? A simple search makes this possible. Likewise, should you want to find the leader of a faith-based initiative based in the U.S. who is in charge of literacy programs in the south of the country, this too is possible.

The third, and perhaps most important, capability that network mapping makes possible is analysis. Using simple network metrics, it is possible to determine which networks are the most connected and which are most isolated, which areas are receiving the most attention and which are underserved. Regions that are highly connected are likely to be more resilient than regions that are disconnected. Network mapping provides this type of insight and answers strategic questions currently understood and those yet to be considered.

The network mapping application, OrgScope, is based on technology developed at Xerox PARC in the 1990s and can be attached to physical mapping systems such as Google Maps. OrgScope, combined with a crisis mapping effort, creates the possibility of being able to locate trouble spots in real-time, identify and match local resources, and significantly strengthen the capacity and preparedness of aid agencies.  Such an approach would provide multi-dimensional perspectives on any crisis, where multiple vectors are brought together in comprehensive and consistent views. It would also address one of the fundamental problems voiced by Anahi Ayala, an expert in the use of new technologies for crisis mapping, in regard to such efforts in the Haiti disaster response:

“One of the main problems that emerged was not only the need to communicate but the need for a coordinated and homogeneous message to be delivered to the affected communities. The problem was posed by the fact that as agencies and organizations were growing in number and size, all of them were trying in different ways to deliver messages to the beneficiaries of aid, with the result of many messages, sometimes contradicting each other, delivered to many people, sometimes not the right receiver for that message.”

Consistency in response stems from consistency in available information and its interpretation. New approaches such as organizational mapping make this possible and herald a new era in crisis management.

 

Enterprise 2.0: Networked--The New Geography of Organizations

No Enterprise 2.0 conference would be complete if Jeff Stamps and I didn't stake a session on what we've been thinking about of late. In this session, we'll give a preview of the new book we're working on (shhhh, we haven't really announced it yet but, hey, this is only my blog...). Need I say that the description, as written, is not precisely what we'll present, which is truly hot off the, er, screen:

Networked: How the 2.0 Enterprise Makes Itself Transparent, Participatory, and Collaborative #e2conf40 (Location: Harbor Ballroom III)

At a time when social tools are dismantling the old beliefs about organizations, savvy enterprises are finding ways to make it easier for people to understand how to get things done. Using insights from the "new science of networks" together with Web 2.0 capabilities, companies can make their organizations much more transparent, highly participatory, and increasingly successful through greater collaboration. With more and more organizations forced to work at a distance—and some companies shutting down travel altogether, it's even more critical that enterprises make it easy for people to truly see what's going on—both locally and globally.

Speaker - Jeffrey Stamps, Chief Scientist, NetAge

Jeff Stamps is co-author of numerous books and articles, including Virtual Teams and The Age of the Network. His early insights into what makes collaboration work have been picked up by organizations around the world, including Volvo and the US Army, where he has designed methods and tools for cross-boundary work that drive extraordinary performance.

Speaker - Jessica Lipnack, CEO, NetAge

Webcom-Montreal 2009 - Wed, May 13, 2009 - 6th Intl Conference

What are you doing next Wed? Come to Montreal for Webcom 2009, where the themes are "Digital Identity, Innovation and Economic Development." I'm not entirely sure what digital identity is so I won't be talking about that but I will be holding forth in two sessions: "Leading Innovation When People Are Far Apart" and "The Digital Organization Chart: How to Encourage Transparency Across the Whole Enterprise."

Here's a little "facebook" of all the speakers.

What's extremely cool about this conference is that the afternoon keynotes are free and open to the public.

And there's a party that night. Thanks, organizers, for inviting me. I'll report back in after the event.

Mapping the recovery - "follow the money" - part 2

Lost in the firestorm over AIG bonuses yesterday was a quiet announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder that laid another solid plank in the government's structure of transparency and accountability. Michael J. Sniffen's AP story, "AG overturns strict Bush-era information disclosure rules," has a cutline summarizing the change underway in Washington: "Agencies urged to release records unless law forbids," i.e. there's an a priori bent toward openness. The AG was way ahead of schedule with this, acting earlier even than the May 21st deadline for policy directives implementing President Obama's Open Government initiative, established by the very first acts of his administration (see "Obama's Midnight Memos).

With the presumption of release of government information, transparency and trust take a big step forward. Which brings us to the second part of "Mapping the Recovery" (see part 1) in our NetAge Reports series. Here, we address the specifics of the data that will be used to provide transparency and accountability for the chunks (block grants) of spending, particularly of the $787 billion passed by Congress in February.

It is especially important that tracking the expenditures be done correctly and that it truly makes responsibility and accountability clear. Renewed public trust rides so heavily on how this money is spent. While AIG's shenanigans show how difficult it can be to engender trust at the recipient end of spending, particularly in the private sector, the government has an opportunity to increase trust in itself, in how it is handling this money, and making sure responsibilities are clear. Done properly, this builds social capital, quite literally, that will make other parts of the multiple critical agendas possible.

Geek (or wonk) warning: this part of the story, below the break, is more than a little geeky (and plenty wonky--a bit of each). We discuss the data that is required for reporting the recovery funds, then what's missing. Specifically, what's missing is the organizational chart of responsibilities--which is not so hard to fix.

We've created a prototype map of the network of relationships called for in OMB's recovery reporting requirements. We illustrate our example with a dummy grant at the end of a real recovery program, which we show in four views: the government agency responsible for the grant, the grant recipient (whom we're inventing in this example) who will be held accountable, the physical location of the grantee, and and the overall purpose of the grant program. You can see the recovery network model live in your browser (wait a moment for the Java to load), and trace the grant along four axis as described below.

-- Jeff Stamps

What’s in the Recovery Picture?

Accountability starts with transparency of details. What, exactly, will we know about each block of money? How will we find it, track it, and understand it?

In network lingo, the recovery data model laid out in the OMB memo specifies six nodes, including the grant node. Each node has a unique ID situated in a defined classification system, and it has a line of text that describes it, a memo field, if you will, providing a name or title. The six nodes are:

• Grant block, a chunk of money with its record ID;

• Responsible agency, with a Treasury Account Symbol (TAS) code;
• Program vehicle, identified by a code in the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) which provides a wealth of purpose-related categories to sort grants by;
• Agency account, the extension of Treasury’s TAS code;
• Recipient of the funds, identified by a Dun & Bradstreet number (DUNS), which, like the program’s CFDA code, provides entry to an array of associated details and purpose-related classification systems (e.g., sector, industry); and
• Place, the physical location of the recipient, completely defined in the data model by an address with a zip code and a city, county, and state Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code, which enable easy association with political districts benefiting from the funds.

The grant block record laid out in the initial guidance (see Figure 2) means, for example, we can follow a grant to a zip code, which puts this chunk of money in the context of a nested set of legal and political jurisdictions capped by states. Simultaneously, the same record can be represented in a variety of other classification systems, such as one organized by purpose (CFDA, the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance) or by a chart of accounts (TAS).

Links between nodes are either contained in the data record for each grant block (e.g., all the levels of address are specified) or are implied by an external classification system (e.g., the program code is part of the CFDA and nestled in tree structures there).

The grant block record laid out in the initial guidance (see Figure 2) means, for example, we can follow a grant to a zip code, which puts this chunk of money in the context of a nested set of legal and political jurisdictions capped by states. Simultaneously, the same record can be represented in a variety of other classification systems, such as one organized by purpose (CFDA, the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance) or by a chart of accounts (TAS).

Links between nodes are either contained in the data record for each grant block (e.g., all the levels of address are specified) or are implied by an external classification system (e.g., the program code is part of the CFDA and nestled in tree structures there).

What’s Missing? Responsibility

The OMB model for “following the money” is missing the organization itself, the codes that place the grant within a chart of responsibilities.

There are two pieces of data missing.

• First is the position responsible for each grant; and

• Second, where appropriate, the name of the person serving in the authorizing position.

Thus, for completeness and transparency on the input side—not just the output side–two more fields (with both a unique ID and a name/title) need adding to the recovery data model (see Figure 3).

Making the Recovery Map

The network logic of responsibility-accountability—a directed link between two nodes—provides a simple way to connect the key elements associated with each chunk of money. To illustrate, we connected four trees into a prototype network map of the recovery spending, including the missing organizational hierarchy. Each chunk, each block grant, shows up in four ways: by granting organization, recipient of the grant, the program and purpose for which it is used, and the recipient location.

As recovery dollars flow, so will the data stream start, and the mapping will be easiest. We have created an OrgScope model to demonstrate what a cross-linked network model might look like using an actual grant program by the NIH for external research facilities and an illustrative grant to a hospital in our city of Newton, MA (see org chart strip in Figure 1 in part 1).

• For the organizational side, we used our network map of the top levels of the US Government (click to see this map live). To the existing org chart, which included NIH, we added the string of positions ending in a specific (dummy) grant block to Newton-Wellesley Hospital;

• Program category and type is modeled with a simplified outline of the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (see CFDA.gov);
• Recipient type is illustrated through general categories of sector and industry; and
• Place is represented by a location map of Massachusetts organized by county (Middlesex), city (Newton), and zip code (02462, Newton Lower Falls).

Relationship chains relating a grant to the four major spokes of the recovery-spending wheel can be seen in the Figure 4 overview and the strings of connection shown in Figure 5 (see the live OrgScope map of these relationships). Of these, three have well-established classification systems (zips, DUNS numbers, CFDA). For the fourth, the government chart of responsibility for the funds, our digital org chart is a start to locating the program within the government structure. However, the government’s map of itself could and should extend to reach at least the program, if not the program officer levels.

It would not be too difficult to create an open government network map. At the top of departments and agencies, a few thousand positions in total are detailed in org charts that can be easily connected together, as we have shown in our publicly available USGov OrgScope map of many of these positions. For the two million or so civil service jobs, much of the information needed to assemble them almost automatically into org charts is just sitting there in federal financial systems. OMB may have much of it. The rest is in the many government human resource and information technology systems. Hooking the whole thing together is mostly a one-time expense of time and IT resources, and a process can easily be set up to refresh the basic data.

Transparency of organizational structure enables people both inside and outside the government to understand better the bureaucratic whole. By connecting the many bits of information into a coherent, shareable picture of our common government, we develop trust, hold one another accountable, and think through solutions with many minds.

Figure 5: Illustrative Grant in Four Interrelated Contexts

 

Mapping the recovery - "follow the money" - part 1

AIG. Again. Let us add our voices to the outcry over the bonus scam. Outrageous. Worse than outrageous is the damage it does to the Obama agenda, particularly the still critical moves to come on the economic rescue plan, as Tom Friedman pointed out in a March 18 opinion column in the New York Times.

What to do? On the recipient side of bailout funds, it will always be difficult to get real transparency and build trust. However, on the input side, the government itself, there is a lot that can be done.

But there's something even more disturbing than the AIG bonuses themselves.

It has to do with an aspect of transparency that is getting a bit of short shrift, in our opinion. There's a lack of visibility into the clear responsibility within government for overseeing the use of so many billions, this oversight, so to speak, from no less an authority than President Obama. Jennifer Loven and Martin Crutsinger's AP story reported in today's Boston Globe quotes the president: "Nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG and allowing themselves to put the economy at risk by some of the outrageous behavior that they were engaged in. We are responsible, though. The buck stops with me. And my goal is to make sure that we never put ourselves in this kind of position again."

Responsibility is the flip side of accountability, two roles in one relationship. While AIG is accountable, the government is responsible. Clarifying--making transparent--the structure of responsibility, aka the org chart (see our dynamic map of the top levels of the US Government in your browser, which takes a moment to load), is one way the government can directly increase the public's trust and govern more effectively. This is a much more direct route to developing trust, and will apply much more broadly across the multiple complex agendas of this administration.

To this point, we've written "Mapping the Recovery," another NetAge Report, this one on transparency, accountability, and responsibility particularly as they apply to tracking the recovery spending as laid out by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). We are posting Part 1 today (after the break below). In this first part, we describe the network of accountability and responsibility, and how the accounting system IS NOT the organizational system, although it sort of looks like it. In the second part, which we'll post tomorrow, we  look specifically at how OMB has set up the data to track the recovery funds, how its multiple elements can be mapped, and, most important, what's missing (hint--responsibility).

-- Jeff Stamps

How IT can track accountability from the get-go

This post is for IT departments. It offers some tips for tracking accountability through corporate data systems, a huge concern for the large number of organizations at both the federal, state, and local levels that will receive funds as part of the US rescue programs.

For months, we've been writing about how to reorganize for greater effectiveness with the smaller footprints. Over the past few days we've been writing about the opposite problem: reorganizing for expansion. The stimulus and other rescue funding is causing some organizations to grow, i.e. those responsible for managing the torrential funding stream (see "Transparency for accountability as the funds roll out" and "Accounting for trillions through OMB").

"Responsible," or accountable, are the operative words here. With a large number of new hires and even larger number of contractors flooding selected departments and agencies at the federal and state levels, the possibility of losing our "whose responsible" handle on the funds and their effectiveness is very high indeed.

There's something IT departments can do something right at the beginning, right now, to help. IT can do its part to ensure that org charts (what we're calling accountability maps) are naturally built into the system as people come on board. To do this, IT needs to collect two simple bits of data for each new "hire," whether employee or contractor:

1. A position title keyed to a unique ID representing its place in the organization's structure (separate from the person's name and unique personnel ID); and
2. A link to the supervisor position directly responsible for this job-holder (its "parent," in logical terms).

Large-scale enterprise data systems held by finance, HR, and IT departments usually house this information already. Finance tracks jobs for accounting purposes and HR tracks people's employment records, enabling them to automatically generate their own internal accountability charts. While most organizations, and certainly government, has this information, it is rarely rendered as a whole (see our USGov map of executive branch accountability.)

While IT often has this information (typically, in its LDAP directory), it sometimes has something more, the logins of all the contracted positions whose work is important enough to require access to internal information systems. If a contractor has access to the organization's network, there's usually a record of who authorized this access, i.e. the contractor's "parent."

Contractors are the "dark matter" of organizations, the great bulk of personnel who are not recognized by most finance and HR systems, except as line items and lump sums. If contractors are hired as a group, perhaps from an outsourcing firm, their from-to, parent-child links should connect to a lead contractor who in turn plugs into a particular supervisor, manager, or point of contact in the host organization.

If this information is collected at the beginning of the expansion wave, then you can automatically generate maps of the growing organization as it grows, attaching budgets, funds, deals, and other information as responsibilities are assigned. Thus, transparency for accountability is in place at the start, not after the fact. It enables complexity to be mapped and understanding to develop in real-time so changes and improvements can be made that are vital to success.

This simple recommendation--to gather and store job titles and parent links for all employees and contractors--is how any organization--public, semi-public, or private--develops its own charts of accountability. These connections serve  as the foundation for the much greater participation and collaboration required to make the new organizations work in a time of tumult and uncertainty.

-- Jeff Stamps

Transparency for accountability as the funds roll out

Transparency was a keyword in Obama's run for the office and it's been a critical tenet of everything that he and his administration have spoken about since. The first presidential directives out of the gate for the new administration were focused on transparency and open government. And, it is central to the bailout-stimulus-rescue plans now underway and soon to come.

There are many potential traps in promoting transparency, of course, and each time something seems a little untransparent, the commentators are quick to wave the hypocrisy flag. Putting aside the media's lack of transparency, we want to focus on another aspect of transparency which is this: its ability to keep a clear focus on accountability. If we know what ends are sought and who's responsible for reaching them, then we have a clear roadmap of accountability.

But how do you have a clear roadmap when the thing itself is far more huge than anything has ever been before?

We talked a bit here about the need for clear maps during reorganization where enterprises are shrinking, but we haven't talked at all about the need for clear maps when organizations are growing, or exploding in size.

Take the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, whose head, Sheila Bair, has been one of those voices for greater transparency. Yay, Ms. Bair. We've spent a bit of time putting the top levels of FDIC into our US Government Map (go to Federal Agencies, at about 2 o'clock).

Thanks to the careful reporting of Eric Lipton in a NY Times Valentine Day post ("Failed Banks Pose Test for Regulators"), we learn that the work--and the budget--of FDIC increased astronomically from 2007 to 2008. FDIC, which has the thankless task of toxic clean-up of failed banks (and the businesses that led to their failures), had just three failed banks to scrub-rinse-repeat in '07. Number in '08? Twenty-five, or, arithmetic fans, eight times the number it had to launder, so to speak, just a year earlier. Given that, as of last week, thirteen more banks already have failed in '09 (and we're only halfway through February), a whole lot more are landing in FDIC's dirty laundry basket even as we write.

To provide some perspective, Lipton examines just one part of FDIC, its Division of Resolutions and Receiverships, whose 2008 budget was $75 million. The budget for 2009? $1 billion. Let's keep following this through. How does FDIC manage to negotiate the deals that allow billions of dollars in assets to move to higher ground?

It hires people. As of right now (or maybe a few weeks ago), FDIC employs 4800 people, according to Lipton's article. When it was last responsible for the prior big bank horror show in the '90s, it employed as many as 15,000. Given that the mess we're dealing with now is HUMUNGUSLY BIGGER than what transpired in the '90s, shall we speculate that perhaps FDIC may need to do more than triple its size? Will the FDIC grow to 30,000? 45,000?

To meet this challenge, it is only hiring 1500 new people. Lipton reports that $700 million (!) will be spent hiring contractors to provide the warm bodies to do the work. So like so much of the rest of corporate America, FDIC is outsourcing the work to avoid the painful ballooning up followed by the excruciating shrinking that always follows windfalls.

How will FDIC manage accountability across such a fast and vast ramp-up of its capabilities? Accountability is all the more important because of the "army of contractors."

Like the dozens of other agencies whose budgets are about to swell--at the national, state, and local levels, FDIC desperately needs to upgrade its accountability mechanisms. One fundamental way to do that is by establishing and maintaining org charts of the whole organization, which are literally the structure of accountability. We're putting in some time as a start to that process and we encourage FDIC and the other agencies and departments charged with implementing the stimulus and other spending to do the same.

With transparency you can see accountability which (re)builds trust.