Information Architecture | blog.richoid.com

Archive for the ‘Information Architecture’ Category

Requisite Entry on Katrina

Saturday, November 26th, 2005

I really don’t feel much like writing today, but I’m watching c-span, news reports, etc. and feel like I have to mark my thoughts.

All energy, after an event like this, should go to saving lives and finding solutions.

But It is obvious that there was warning both of the geographic problems of New Orleans, and of the severity of the storm.

It is obvious that the response mechanism waited for the aftermath to begin, rather than being anticipated from the point the storm was identified as both large, and headed for the LA coast. That was a terrible mistake. We had enough warning to have water, food, and rescue vehicles at ready. We had enough time to have law enforcement ready. This is a clear case of mismanagement.

But now, give blood, give money. Give it to the Red Cross. They know what to do, how to do it, and they do it all the time. Thank you, people of the Red Cross.

70% of the citizens of New Orleans and the surrounding area are black. The people who stayed behind were disproportionately black. Don’t draw conclusions about the problems of the looting, shooting, rape — or for that matter, the slow response — being race-related. If there is a problem, it is more the long-term problem of poor states getting poor service from a political system that is of, by, and for the wealthy.

I believe the best efforts are now being directed to the area, and the private sector will make up for the weak Federal and State response going forward. It’s a big mess, and people have just started to suffer from it. It will cause economic and social ripples for a decade.

The weak response is based on several things: the lack of fact-based decision-making that is the hallmark of Republican leadership, the simple cost-benefit problems of raising a city above sea level, the nature of poor people under extreme pressure, the obsession with “homeland security” at the cost of actual homeland security, the informational isolation of the Bushies, the primary interest of the Feds of being on camera, looking “in-charge” vs. their willingness to actually do the work of being in charge.

Don’t take my word for it, here are the details. Quick quote from the end of the article: “But with the change of administration in 2001, many of Witt’s prevention programs were reduced or cut entirely. After Sept. 11, former FEMA officials and outside authorities said, Washington’s attention turned to terrorism to the exclusion of almost anything else.”

On another note, in my area of Northern California, regular flooding of the valley towns of Marysville, Yuba City, and Sacramento led to these towns being periodically buried in mud. This led to the end of Hydraulic Mining, but regardless of the debris from Hydraulic Mining, this problem would have occurred anyway. The Sacramento Valley floor with its rich soil for farming formed this way, before we were here to see it.

To resolve the annual destruction the flooding brought, the cities were raised. It was done with true horsepower and people power.

Retaining walls were built in front of the buildings with walkways remaining on then-ground-floor levels, and dirt was brought in and dumped between the retaining walls, raising the level of the streets.

Once this was completed, the downstairs merchants moved upstairs and new entryways were completed. The downstairs became basements. Walkways at street (second floor) levels were built that became roofs over the old walkways. Glass bricks were embedded in the new sidewalks to light the still-used passageways beneath.

And levees were built. They’re in rough shape now, and have failed a number of times, creating problems in small towns.

But Sacramento so far has been spared.

Our good congressmen (recently deceased) Bob Matsui fought for improved levees for years. Our bad congressman John Doolittle fought against them… preferring instead the Auburn Dam. I won’t go into the foolishness of THAT. Finally, an agreement was reached, and levees will be improved. Planning ahead is a good thing. Of course, we were lucky. The perfect storm hasn’t hit.

Will they be improved on time, and will the improvements be adequate, when the perfect storm finally does hit? Can we use the old adage “Time will tell” or should we jump to it?

On thing we can do is kick Doolittle out on his ass… And put in someone with some foresight. Matsui was an awesome Senator… hard to find any way to criticize him (imagine that!). His wife, Doris Matsui has taken his position. Let’s hope she’s as effective.

I bet the people stranded on the Gulf Coast didn’t think politics effected them personally. Now, I hope they know better. Now, maybe we all know better, and won’t trust Republicans with our lives, any more. I can wish, can’t I?

Posted in Information Architecture, Politics | No Comments »

What businesses can learn from the Katrina debacle

Saturday, November 26th, 2005

There’s a lot out there about crisis response for businesses. Much of this applies to what happened on the Gulf Coast. A lot can be inferred. Obviously larger companies can do more of this stuff than tiny companies. But tiny companies are usually in one place, and just are in survival mode after such a crisis. I’m also going to note the governmental failure to follow these principles:

1) Send the company CEO or president to as near the location of the incident as possible, as soon as possible. Immediately announce his/her intent to do so, if they can’t go immediately due to local conditions. Bush should have helicoptered in as soon as the rain stopped. He didn’t have to stay long.

2) Start with your people, money can be dealt with later. Take care of people. Basic needs. The people who were in the dome needed water, food, sanitation and healthcare. They were told to go there, and many arrived before the storm got intense. Yet there was no thought to what it would be like 3 days later. And during those days, no one was queued up to bring in supplies and transportation and law enforcement immediately after the storm cleared.

3) Figure out what you can do for your community. What resources and people power can you put to work to help people? Customer service and billing should immediately distribute statements of policy to customer-facing people that the company will work with effected customers, and no late fees, account closures, etc. will occur for those in effected areas. Accept vouchers from FEMA, Red Cross, etc. even if you’re not sure you’ll get compensated later.

3) IT matters. Recover PC hardware if possible, ignore the rest. Hard drives are enough. People who can work will need their PCs. But make it clear: people are what matter; real estate, insurance, etc. are secondary. Make sure that those you ask to work under these conditions are OK. Most will be relieved to hand over most responsibility and deal with their own issues, but will feel some guilt. So keep them in the loop.

4) Be prepared: multiple redundant data centers, digital infrastructure that is hosted, rather than local, etc. will all go a long way to keeping things moving under these crisis conditions. It is really stupid to host your website on an internal server. Hosting centers are built with security, power redundancy, and emergency plans that your company probably can’t do as well.

5) But mostly, cross training and management teams that are not spread too thin… lean budgets may seem like a great idea to provide the most benefit to shareholders… right up until a chunk of your company is under water, and “the only guy who knows how to…” is missing, or injured, or traumatized. This goes to company culture, too. Companies that collaborate can adapt under extreme circumstances, while those that rely entirely on internal competition to drive performance fall apart. This is due to information and power hoarding.

6) Use a blog. Post often. Internal and external blogs are great. Employees need to know, just as the public does. Have a great writer tag along with the boss, and go to it. Make sure the posts genuine and useful and about the Boss’s observations. He can take notes and the blogger can expand, but it’s better if the boss writes (quickly) and the blogger cleans it up. Under stress, the boss could say the wrong thing or write things that cause confusion. The blogger should have a frank relationship with the boss.

7) Make sure your organization has (at each office) a satellite phone and a laptop that can use the phone as a modem. Cell phones probably won’t work. Consider a wireless network. A local wireless network can be set up quickly. You’ll need inverters, batteries, even a solar panel or two would be good. You’ll be worse than useless if you go into an area and can’t communicate after the batteries go dead. Have battery powered lights, and radios stored for these occasions. Of course, first aid kits are already done, right?

If I come across more, I’ll add them to this article.

Posted in Information Architecture | No Comments »

Selective reality – how information works politically, with Terry Pratchet

Saturday, November 26th, 2005

I’m reading an author that is both really fun, funny, smart and simultaneously escapist and very relevant. Terry Pratchet writes about discworld (mostly) which is a bit like middle earth or any other mythical place, but funnier. I am reading Monstrous Regiment and just finished Night Watch. This is not for everyone. It is satire, mystery, myth fiction (sometimes called fantasy fiction, but more precisely, it is really it’s own thing.)

It always is about a small number of very bright people struggling against the general stupidity of everyone else. This may smack of intellectual elitism, but let’s face it, everyone thinks they think they’re smarter than someone else. And more morally grounded. And have “common sense”. And are “better than average” drivers.

Remember Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average?

This one starts out as a lesson in Patriotism, Nationalism, Jingoism or other generally Bushy behavior. Don’t worry about the U.S., we’re not special that way. The only concern is whether, here in the U.S. or anywhere else, that approach to government becomes dominant. Then, whether we swing left or right, we all end up in the same place: a few people making all the decisions regardless of the needs, or the will, of everyone else.

So here’s to the magic of words, and symbols.

Are you more moved by the Flag? Or the Constitution? Why is it that people who wave the Flag are the most willing to waive the Constitution.

Robert Byrd, a very old, very shaky, but relatively wise Democrat who is prone to old-fashioned speech-making, has proposed making Sept. 17th Constitution Day. Federal funds would go to provide educational materials, and schools would take time to teach the Constitution to the kids of the U.S. We teach about Thanksgiving more than we teach about the Consititution. No wonder people who consider themselves patriots so often promote anti-democratic, unconstitutional policies. Lately it seems like the courts find half the stuff coming out of our House of Representatives to be unconstitutional.

Interestingly, the town where I grew up (and still live, nearby) is Nevada City has had parades and speeches on Constitution Day, each year.

Byrd said in a speech the other day:
In the federalist papers, James Madison reasoned that in framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. Accordingly, Madison and the other framers of constitution divided power so that no one person or branch of government could gain complete advantage. As Madison explained it, ambition must be made to counteract ambition. That is why the framers viewed the separation of powers with such importance. No single man, no single branch of government was to be given absolute power. No single man was to have sole authority to decide the fate of the nation. Oh, how different — how different today.”

This article from the Raleigh/Durham News Observer shows an indication of the problem:
“Students at one of the area’s largest Christian schools are reading a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery with its view that slaves lived “a life of plenty, of simple pleasures.”

One blog joked about the states of South Carolinastan and Talibama. This is where most of the activity around stopping schools from teaching evolution as fact has actually become law.

This crap fits into the same category of those who have written that the Nazis didn’t kill Jews, that Native Americans just died off from disease or lack of buffalo (like all indians lived on the plains and hunted buffalo), or that all our guys in Iraq are happy little soldiers, of perfect moral integrity, and heroic (on our side) and grateful Iraquis (on the sidelines) and Iranians and a few Saudis (causing all the trouble.) Or, that the deficit isn’t a problem. Or… I could go on forever.

I actually think visiting generals in Iraq probably believe a lot of this stuff. After all, who’s telling them the truth? Does a private talk directly to a general frankly about problems, or does he kiss ass? How rare is the guy who stood up and asked a direct, unscripted question of a guy like Rumsfeld? I know the truth doesn’t get discussed in the modern corporation, where the worst that will happen is job loss or no annual raise… in the military, the consequences are more serious for people who speak up.

It’s all about communication, folks. If it is euphimistic, source-limited, or generally bad, everything goes haywire. We’ve all worked in Dilbert-esque situations. The core problem is lack of willingness to deal with, sort out, and resolve situations that are negative, in any intellectually honest way.

That is what our constitution was designed to do: create a governmental structure where all information comes out, is debated, and the result is based on a compromise of competing interest.

That is what the scientific method was intended to do: Overcome the natural human tendency to believe whatever is convenient, career enhancing, or traditionally accepted, by putting it to the test of observation, repeatability, and peer review. The interesting thing is both our constitutional democracy and the scientific method only maintain credibility by way of argument. It progresses in fits and starts, and experiences long delays. It is very messy and frustrating. Sometimes the results are wrong for a time, but they tend to self-correct. But we have to keep an eye on, and a commitment to honest practice of each method.

’nuff for now…

Posted in Books, Information Architecture, Politics | No Comments »