Just got back from a strategy session for the $786 billion stimulus package signed into law yesterday in Denver. Anyone who has any sense of how these things work knows that most of that money will be wasted. For instance, the Washington Department of Ecology has to allocate $1 Billion in a month, a freakin' month. That agency is not prepared to effectively distribute those funds.
On the hand, that's ok, the entire point of the stimulus package is to just get something moving in the economy again, even if its sloppy, the economy needs liquid capital to prevent it from grinding to a hault. On the other hand, it begs the question, who is prepared to know how to effectively distribute those funds? Who will determine the best projects, the best coalitions, the most reliable or promising businesses?
The President clearly wants these funds to be leveraged to promote emerging industries and companies, how does our society evaluate those actionable opportunities and convert them into lucrative and meaningful American enterprises?
I see two default frameworks currently on the table, the government contract bidding/grant system, and the standard venture capital model. Both have their limitations, and neither provides an off-the-shelf process to help society obtain the kick of quick, efficient, and innovative solutions we need out of the stimulus package.
Its clear that command and control institutions are experiencing a global epidemic of failure that knows no bounds. In a time of crisis, many managers, business, and public servants devolve to conservative frameworks to sustain existing operations, this is a mistake. I'll get more into that question in an upcoming post, but fundamentally we need to figure out how to not waste this goddamn money while also not reinvesting in inefficient and destructive systems that led us to this brink.
How do we rethink the relationship between industries, corporate networks, governmental agencies, as well as NGO's and non-profits to realize the best solution and maximize efficency?
Where do new models of information tracking and knowledge management enter the equation? and reputation? and project management? and crowdsourcing? The answer resides in our understanding of Network, how we map it, how we visual it, and how we actualize it. I'm afraid the people with the purse don't have nearly as good of a map as they need right now, how can we help?
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One way would be to create or support collaborative, distributed, public decision systems to enable posting of spending opportunities (along with rich profiles on the potential recipients, goals, and performance tracking/reporting) and voting by the audience. For example, what if a system actually enabled you to allocate your share (based on tax paying population count for example) to the causes/projects that you felt were most worthy. Another approach would be to just put the planned recipients and their projects into a wiki and let the public in a given area have at it. These systems would not necessarily be the final arbiter of allocations but would be (guaranteed) used in calculations by the hierarchical systems to support better/more accountable decision making.
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