Create the Open Source Agency (OSA) recommended by the 9-11 Commission on page 413, consistent with the Aspin-Brown ("should be a top priority") and Moynihan Commissions and others, to accomplish three things:
1. Serve as the public intelligence agency, creating Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) that can be used to support the 99% of the US Government, state and local governments, and citizen groups that do not receive secret intelligence support today (i.e. everyone except the President, who only gets 4% of what he needs at a cost to the taxpayer of $65-75 billion a year).
2. Serve as the national proponent, skunk works, and support agency for moving the entire nation to Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) to end the corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse as well as the massive loss of productivity associated with proprietary software that is also unsafe.
3. Serve as the national proponent, skunk works, and support agency for Open Spectrum as recommended by David Weinberger, Jock Gill, and others, to end the monopolization of frequencies by parties that are inherently inefficient and often corrupt.
HOWEVER, the OSA should NOT be part of the secret intelligence community, which calls Open Source Intelligence "Open Sores", but rather be fully-funded by the Department of Defense via non-reimbursable funding to the Department of State, where the OSA would be the sister agency to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (one brings global knowledge in, the other broadcasts US knowledge out).
750 international professionals have spoken to and worked with 7,500 international mid-career professionals across eight tribes of intelligence (government, military, law enforcement, academia, business, media, non-governmental, and civil society including labor unions and religions) for 20 years in pursuit of this objective.
The Open Source Agency as formulated by all of these professionals, and as discussed with citizen groups in recent years, would fund:
1. National Strategy Center with full public transparency and participation, such that the Executive and Congress and Governors would be required to create coherent strategies that address the ten high-level threats to humanity (Poverty, Infectious Disease, Environmental Degradation, Inter-State Conflict, Civil War, Genocide, Other Atrocities, Proliferation, Terrorism, and Transnational Crime) by coherently harmonizing the twelve core policy domains (Agriculture, Diplomacy, Economy, Education, Energy, Family, Health, Immigration, Justice, Security, Society, Water) and budgets, all transparently, all with public "common sense" participation, all with a total elimination of the earmarks that have led to a Congress Of, By, and For Wall Street.
2. Multinational Decision Support Center, building on the pioneering done by the US Central Command with the Coalition Coordination Center, but bringing together mid-career intelligence analysts from 90 nations instead of logisticians, working only with public information, and providing decision support to all organizations world-wide that are working toward peace and prosperity in the public lnterest.
3. Assistant Secretary General for Decision Support in the United Nations, a ten person office funded by the OSA with a US Ambassador as Deputy and double-hatted as the Director of the Office of Information Sharing Treaties and Agreements. This is how we vacuum clean the raw data in the UN System, which is nearly incoherent, and give back to the UN sense-making while leveraging the information across the ten threats and twelve policies to harmonized the budgets of 90+ nations against common objectives.
4. Global Range of Needs and Gifts Table, an online capability that can be connected to via RapidSMS such as being pioneered by UNICEF so brilliantly, such that anyone can enter a "peace target" and anyone (or any group of individuals, or organizations) can commit to meeting the need. Like needs can be clustered, blocks of giving can be distributed, all transparent.
For more information about all of this, visit www.oss.net and www.earth-intelligence.net. Two free books online relevant to evaluating this idea are COLLECIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, at www.oss.net/CIB; and ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig, at www.oss.net/PIG, with the chapters on Substance of Governance and the Annotated Bibliography particularly recommended.
We pray that this Administration will understand that "bipartisan" is what happens when the two parties shutting out all other parties agree to get together and stick it to the US taxpayer. An Open Source Agency will empower all of the people all of the time, and leave no corrupt deed hidden--"put enough eyeballs on it, you get honest government Of By and For We the People."
-----------ADDED COMMENT FOR PERSPECTIVE--------------
A colleague whose knowledge I deeply respect has pointed out that as written my proposal for an Open Source Agency alienates every single major constituency now in power. As much as I regret that, that is the point.
HOWEVER, while demanding that we all take back the power and become the informed citizens in charge of the Republic and the government that is supposed to serve We the People, not treat us with contempt as is now the case, I do wish to point out a couple of things:
1) Intellectual property, spectrum rights, and various other trappings of capitalism as we now have it need to be reviewed, respected, and renegotiated. To take one example, the purchase of Congress by Disney and other publishers to extend copyright far beyond the vision of the founders is corrupt, plain and simple. Similarly, patents filed to keep new technologies off the market (including green energy, permanent paints, long-lasting anything) need to be restrained in the public interest--use it or lose it.
2) Predatory immoral capitalism has destroyed the Republic and most of the world. I point to John Bogle's book on The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, William Grieder's book on The Soul of Capitalism, and Howard Bloom's forthcoming book on The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalsim that I totally endorse. MORAL capitalism seeks to do well by doing good and that kind of capitalism is what I support.
In a nutshell, I apologize to all those that will be offended by my scorched earth depiction of what an Open Source Agency needs to do in the public interest (the book length version at Amazon and free at www.oss.net/BOOKS is THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest). There is absolutely no question in my mind but that an Open Source Agency will allow We the People to manage every aspect of our Nation's transformation with accountability, integrity, and transparency. The Golden Rule will apply. It's time we take our country back.
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