Operations are activities focused on goals and objectives

Government agencies have goals. Nonprofits have goals. For profit organizations have community service goals. The President has goals. Congress has goals. Governors and state legislatures have goals. Mayors and city councils have goals. Where is the government "Interstate Highway" Website that puts all these goals together, in one place, for neighborhoods, communities, cities, and larger MSA's? Some years ago, I invited nonprofits providing services for low income personnel in the MSA I work in to a meeting. We sat in a circle. Each person spoke about what they did, what they loved about it, their dreams, and wish lists. People stayed 2 hours after the meeting was supposed to end, excitedly talking, each person there made at least 2 new contacts, who shared their interests. A great deal of good came out of that meeting, for some years. Why can't we do this at a "one-stop shopping" Website, sorted by goal, and objectives within that goal? For example, developing affordable housing- the Habitat folks are well known; they would have their contact information there. Companies are interested in workforce housing, and some allow employees to volunteer with Habitat. There are many other people interested. A model for how this works would be lean manufacturing, and the "virtual" lean workgroup. The goal of providing affordable medical care involves many players; getting them into one area to communicate might be the only way to make this happen. We do have relations with other countries, and the State Department and others have goals regarding foreign countries. So, while you're at it, don't limit the site to American citizens; let foreigners enter their own areas. For example, used books are cheap in the US, but many African universities have very few books. I've seen Africans excitedly buying 20 year old textbooks; when asked why, they tell me anything is better than nothing. Sister city arrangements could go here. A good description of Sarvodaya Shramadana, for example, shows how people can work together to create things no one person or agency could create. The Asset-Based Community Development [no endorsement implied, cited as example only] people surveyed a Chicago neighborhood, acc. to Jody Kretzmann. They found 400 community groups, everything from church choirs, to boy scout troops, to bowling leagues. Due to limited time, they estimated this was less than half the total number of groups. Of the 400, 75% were quite willing to do more in their community, even beyond their stated purpose- and they uniformly said no-one had ever asked them before.

The ABCD concept could be one place to start, with this website, and there are preliminary software packages that do this now, though of course they are not widely known. We have more than enough resources to solve all of our problems, the problem is lack of coherence. What we have now is like incoherent light; we need to find a way to focus citizen energy, the way a laser is focused. The goals and objectives are a sort of crystal seed for this, and the focused energy of participants, in this analogy, the excitation of energy similar metaphorically to a laser.

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