A blog by Martin Erasmuson
Introduction
Why is it that most Nations spend billions of dollars of their military infrastructure, and next to nothing on their Information Infrastructure? As countries scramble to respond to COVID 19, the deplorable state of various Information Infrastructures has contributed to thousands of lives lost and plunged the global economy into a depression that will affect a generation and change the world forever. As we step into uncharted territory, how did we get here and what can we do about it?
****************************************************
Earlier in April 2020 I watched an interview between Bill Gates and Trevor Noah regards the global COVID 19 response. In that Noah refers to a 2015 Ted Talk where Gates, along with many other health experts, accurately predicted the current pandemic, saying it was inevitable in the next decade (by 2025). He further predicted the now confirmed dire human, social and economic consequences of such a pandemic. Gates points to an almost total lack of planning or investment by most Governments in pandemic preparedness or the information infrastructures necessary for responding to and recovering from one. Gates contrasts that with various countries heavy investment in ‘defence’ spending, including permanent forces, infrastructure, global military information systems, and a vast array of equipment from aircraft carriers to personal body armour. To underscore that, estimates suggest it costs the US US$2.1 million per year for each soldier deployed in Afghanistan while their latest Aircraft Carrier cost US$13 billion to build, and they have 11 of them! Closer to home for Kiwis, Jane's reports that New Zealand’s fiscal year 2019-20 defence budget was NZ$5.06 billion. National Defence Forces even run to the significant costs of war-games where various scenarios are played out and the outcomes analysed to better prepare for the real thing. Doubly tragic then it was not bullets, missiles or suicide bombers that have killed thousands of people around the world and wrecked global economies, but microbes.
On 3rd March 2020 New Zealand launched Koi Tū: Centre for Informed Futures, an independent, apolitical think tank headed by Distinguished New Zealand Professor Sir Peter Gluckman. Amongst other objectives, Koi Tu is to consider “How can we strengthen [] resilience to deal with rapid change? How can we counter misinformation and make sure people can access information that they can trust?”
On 17th April 2020 they published a discussion paper looking at the future impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on New Zealand. While it makes for sobering reading, key phrases include:
the future [is] uncertain
[we need to] prepare [] for future disasters
a more secure, sustainable, and resilient future requires innovative thinking from multiple perspectives.
resilience will be critical
The appalling State of Information Infrastructures
While Singapore and South Korea quickly got on top of the COVID 19 pandemic with digital contact tracing supported by a wider information infrastructure, other Jurisdictions Information Infrastructures have proven woefully inadequate to deal with the current crisis. In her 14 April 2020 Washington Post article, columnist Catherine Rampell exposes some alarming facts regards that of the US, including such revelations as “State and Federal [] unemployment insurance websites crashing [and] New Jersey, for example begging for volunteers still fluent in COBOL”.
To put that in context, COBOL was designed in 1959 along with the Chevy Impala (right), and forms part of the key IT infrastructure “in all but 16 states”. In Florida, with over 32K confirmed COVID 19 diagnoses (29 April 2020) saw “desperate Americans standing in crowded lines to retrieve paper copies of forms necessary to get [] benefits”. From a National Information Infrastructure perspective, here in New Zealand we are relatively advanced compared to the US but as the above Washington Post article suggests, that is hardly a good comparison.
In NZ’s current battle with the COVID 19 pandemic, I acknowledge we need to focus on the problem at hand with the best resources we have available and I further acknowledging the various people and agencies doing everything they can in that effort and in particular, my fellow information professionals. You guys are heroes.
That said, as we enter the 3rd decade of the 21st century, and in spite of regular announcements by elected and appointed officials about being in the ‘information age’ and treating information as a ‘strategic asset’, we still approach that from a 20th century perspective.
For a few millennia we have thought about ‘hard’ borders with ‘hard’ infrastructure to defend them. Reference comments above regards defence spending. Back in March 2017 I published a blog titled Weaponised Information, commenting that ‘’Where this new [information] war is different is the battleground. It’s virtual and stealthy. Forget sniffer-dogs and customs checks at the border. Those electrons slip in and out and no one notices’’. Add ‘microbes’ like SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to the list of things that don’t care about our heavy investment in military hardware or artificial lines on the map. In addition to the likes of Bills Gates, various health and security experts have for some time been raising the alarm regards the threat of a pandemic, pointing to a lack of preparedness and urging action. As recently as January 2019 the U.S. intelligence community in its annual global threat assessment declared, “We assess [] the world [] remains vulnerable to a [] large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability [and] severely affect the world economy”!!
Here in NZ, if you compare our National Information Infrastructure readiness in Military terms, it is the equivalent of the WW2 Home Guard, a part-time army where participants, on appearance of the latest crisis, give up their day-jobs and turn up with their own guns, pitch-forks and pointy-sticks. In New Zealand over the last several years, different emergencies have become the norm: Rena - 2011, Kaikoura Earthquake - 2016, Christchurch Port Hills Fire - 2017, Cyclone Gita - 2017, Pigeon Valley Fire (Nelson) - 2019 and today, the COVID 19 pandemic. For each we have mobilised our ‘part-time’ army who tirelessly work long hours, cobble together whatever data they can find and make up processes and information on the fly to deal with the current crisis. With many leaders around the world adopting war metaphors in describing responses to COVID 19, I believe this part-time-army comparison is appropriate and justified. Reiterating, it is not intended as a slight upon the information-warriors involved in the current or previous crisis; quite the contrary. Indeed, over the years, I’ve been in their ranks.
For some context, if you look at historical conflicts between aboriginal peoples and colonial invaders, the former’s eventual demise was not for a lack of courage, dedication or fighting skill but rather resources; the difference between part-time and full-time soldiers. Here in New Zealand, 19th century Māori engaged in their own struggle against the then Colonial Government, and despite abundant skills, no shortage of commitment, use of innovative strategies and tactics and indeed many local victories; ultimately they lost in the face of 18,000 full-time British troops against their own 4,000 part-time warriors. It was a victory of capacity and strategy over capability and tactics. Similarly, in spite of our many talented information-warriors, NZ’s part-time approach to a National Information Infrastructure means we are ill-equipped to support a sustained, National response to any crisis that requires real-time or near-real-time discovery and access to relevant information. And so, we are doomed to persistent mediocrity, lost opportunities, social upheaval and significant costs.
What are those costs? As if to underscore my point, and not without some irony regards ignoring the warnings, here in NZ we have a pretty good idea what the cost of our absent National Information Infrastructure is. Back in 2009, NZ Government agencies LINZ, DOC and (then) Ministry of Economic Development published the report: ‘Spatial Information in the New Zealand Economy’ (what is spatial information?) which concluded: “[in 2008] spatial information [was] estimated to have added NZ$1.2 billion in productivity-related benefits to the New Zealand economy” and went on to say that “had key barriers been removed [] New Zealand could have benefited from an additional NZ$481 million in productivity-related benefits [] generating at least NZ$100 million in government revenue”. It also established the problem is not a lack of data per se, stating that “the [New Zealand] government holds large amounts of [ ] data but in many cases these data are either not being shared effectively [ ] and sometimes not released at all, and that there is a lack of knowledge as to what data are available where, and how one can access them”. The report also determined that the “cost of barriers will rise with each year that passes”. The figures and commentary from the 2009 report solely focus on spatial information which is a subset of NZ’s wider information assets. The reader can draw their own conclusions regards what the numbers might be if extended to include our entire National Information assets in 2008, or now in 2020.
An Uncertain Future
As we find ourselves in the thick of the 4th Industrial Revolution with the exponential growth of and demand for information at its core, the current COVID 19 crisis has simply thrown a spot light on our antiquated information infrastructures. In describing the current pandemic, some commentators have used the phrase ‘Black Swan Event’ which describes ‘an extremely rare, unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation, has potentially severe impact and consequences that was obvious in hindsight’; if only we had been able to see it back then! In April 2016 I penned a blog ‘How to cure schizophrenic organisations’. Among other things, shizophrenia sufferers have a ‘Sensory-Gating’ deficit meaning they struggle to ‘filter out redundant or unnecessary stimuli’ and so, become overwhelmed. In that blog I propose most organisations have an ‘information-gating’ deficit. With the omnipresent, exponential growth in information, their last-century information infrastructures make it almost impossible for them to filter out redundant and unnecessary information or conversely, identify and focus on the most relevant and essential information, and so they become overwhelmed, even in ‘normal’ times, and doubly so in times of crisis.
New Zealand and the world will sooner or later get through the impact and upheaval of the current COVID 19 pandemic with talk of ‘a return to normal’. Such comments are naïve. Notwithstanding the turmoil of the current pandemic, we’ve been having ‘Black Swan Events’ for much of this century and that will likely continue into the foreseeable future, indeed there are several globally-disruptive events on the immediate horizon.
The Nature of ‘work’?
Let’s start with some specific COVID 19 related change, the idea of work and going to ‘the office’. Our 20th century model sees high-rise based central business districts (CBD) and a transport system designed to ferry workers to and from it five days a week. Add to that the associated telecoms infrastructure and all the hangers-on businesses, from drycleaners and cafes catering for all those workers. Is all that about to change? Many commentators including Fortune are suggesting our notion of work will change forever on the back of COVID 19 with Executives of some global companies saying “the coronavirus has [changed their] thinking about how [] we all work, and could forever reconfigure the entire notion of offices [and that] COVID-19 has hurled them at warp speed into a future that they had envisioned unfolding slowly over many years”. And further saying “to their astonishment, their online-only operations have worked well—raising the possibility of continuing much of the lockdown’s online-first work [post-COVID 19]”. If that is the case, how will that affect demand for construction and occupation of office buildings in every central business district around the world? Has the very idea of a CBD had its day? What of all those other businesses that are dependent on all those office workers who are now doing their own laundry and lunches at home in between Zoom and Teams calls?
The oil quadruple-whammy
Forget the double-whammy, the global oil industry is being hit by a quadruple-whammy that will permanently change the US and the rest of the planet.
Over supply
Lost in the COVID 19 news-cycle was the oil price-war that kicked-off between Saudi Arabia and Russia on 8th March 2020. This saw a massive increase in production by those two players as each sought to gain market share. As with any supply/demand model, this over supply had key oil markets WTI and Brent plunge nearly 50% to under US$30/barrel in early April 2020 and then below US$0.00 just a couple of weeks later. While June 2020 oil futures stayed in positive territory, indicating the market expects some rebound mid-year, those for May 2020 fell off a cliff, dropping to minus-US$37.63!! (image below).
Reduced demand & debt
Shale-Oil accounts for around 60% of total US oil production with most drilling companies relying on prices above US$50 a barrel to break-even. With most Shale Oil companies already carrying significant debt (around US$1.9 trillion), the over-supply and low price created by the Saudi/Russia price-war would, on a good day, force many into bankruptcy. Add to that the COVID 19 ‘demand’ crisis. Forbes in their 22 March 2020 article predicts that “gasoline consumption in the US will drop by 55% for March and April [2020] due to COVID-19 [and] jet fuel demand [by 50%] over the same period”. The upshot; way more oil than before with way less people wanting it. With those major business leaders predicting the current ‘work from home’ model may be the new norm, long after COVID 19, reduced demand for gas will persist with less ‘commute’ miles travelled.
The demise of oil
By far the biggest threat to the global oil industry is the impending demise of the internal combustion engine (ICE) and with it the collapse of the global oil market. Futurist commentator Tony Seba lays out the economic argument for that, predicting there will be no new ICE vehicles manufactured in the world after 2025 (the linked YouTube is really interesting, well worth a watch). Basically, according to Seba, oil is dead. Given its economic reliance on oil, it’s ‘brown-trousers’ time for the United States and with it, much of the rest of the planet. (I published a blog here back in November 2017 discussing that).
Re-purposing Central Business Districts
Above we went through several factors that will fundamentally change the nature of the Central Business District (CBD) as we currently know it: more work-from-home and less people traveling to the CBD generally; those that are traveling to the CBD using electric vehicles (battery and/or hydrogen); 95% of [ ] car-miles will be traveled in self-driving, electric, shared vehicles or Transport as a Service (TaaS); what to do with vast swathes of the built environment previously dedicated to parking (in the above example, Los Angeles will free up enough vacant parking space to fit three cities the size of San Francisco).
Notwithstanding the overall disruption of the above scenario, what is the impact and planning implications and options for investment in Billions of dollars in CBD Public Infrastructure in the coming decades? How best to re-purpose parking buildings, and into what? Who needs to be involved in that process? What information will they need to understand complex planning, economic and social problems; consider options and agree solutions? What data and information will be required? And how will the multiple stakeholders find, use and share that information?
Multiple Organ Failure of the US economy
The US economy was already on life-support prior to COVID 19 turning up, despite their apparent ‘surging’ share market and economic growth over the last decade. The 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) started in the US, precipitated in large part by massive debt (though they were not alone in this regard). Notwithstanding that, the US solution to the post GFC recession was to create more debt! And by more, I mean a lot more. As CNBC journalist Jeff Cox put it in his June 2016 article; “The numbers are daunting if not shocking: [since 2008] US$12.3 trillion of money printing [quantitative easing], nearly $10 trillion in negative-yielding global bonds”.
In the current COVID 19 crisis, the US is again undertaking a massive Quantitative Easing exercise, basicall printing more money. In addition to the oil markets discussed above, is the Saudi/Russia oil war and COVID 19 which is impacting the US share market. From late February 2020 this saw US stocks fall over 25% with Goldman Sachs predicting that US GDP will shrink 29% by the end of the 2nd quarter of 2020. Some commentators are suggesting US unemployment could reach 32% while here in New Zealand the COVID 19 induced unemployment fallout is projected to be 9.2%. More alarming was the observation from economists at Nautilus’ who have compared the last several months SPX (share price index) (below) with that leading up to the 1929 share market collapse that precipitated the Great Depression of the 1930s. The tracks are unnervingly similar.
Again, what are the complex, interdependent issues at play in such a scenario, and (the emeging theme); what data and information will be required by various stakeholders? And how will they creates, find, use and share that information?
Climate change
And last but not least, add to all that the predicted impacts of climate change including: Higher temperatures, changed rainfall patterns and demand for water, sea-level rise, pressure on biodiversity, transport, built environment (in addition to the impacts of less vehicles predicted by Tony Siba and more working from home discussed above), agriculture, business and finance (in particular the impact of insurance and reinsurance due to increased climate change risks).
**************************************
The future then is looking deeply uncertain, meanwhile many remain fixed on the past and a yearning to return to it. As L. P. Hartley put it “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’. If ever there was a time to accept that things are never going to be the same again; it is now. We need to look to and expect regular National and Global disruptive events and turn our inherent ‘hindsight’ into ‘foresight’; and to do that we’ll require an adaptive, agile approach providing ready access to relevant information.
The role of Information in Planning for Deep Uncertainty
This next section acknowledges the work of Professor Warren E. Walker, emeritus Professor of Policy Analysis, Delft University of Technology who’s research includes methods for dealing with deep uncertainty in developing public policy. I have adapted Walker’s model in thinking about, designing and implementing Information Infrastructures in managing conditions of deep uncertainty.
Levels and Locations of Uncertainty
Walker developed a simple model (below) for establishing levels and locations of uncertainty. It contrasts characteristics of ‘certainty’ from those of ‘deep uncertainty’, and by extension, the architecture and approach of the Information Infrastructures that support those two states.
In the Walker Model, the ‘x’ axis has four levels of uncertainty, from Very Certain through to Deeply Uncertain. For each of those levels the ‘y’ axis describes: Context (X), the system model (R), possible outcomes (O), and metrics or weights ((confidence of those outcomes (W)).
Levels one and two represent a logical, rational decision-making environment characterised by strong cause/affect relationships and relatively high levels of certainty and agreement regards the nature of problem/s at hand, possible options, intended actions and expected outcomes.
Walker describes Level 4 ‘Deep Uncertainty’ as a situation in which “the experts do not know or parties [] cannot agree upon (i) the external context of the system, (ii) how the system works and its boundaries, and/or (iii) the outcomes of interest from the system and/or their relative importance. [Further] there is [often] disagreement about which outcomes are of most importance, and this may be deeply uncertain, too e.g., the current [April 2020] disagreement in the U.S. about the trade-off between human lives and the economy [i.e. open up the economy and expect more sickness and deaths verses keep the economy closed and save lives]”
In spite of regular crisis, New Zealand and much of the rest of the world persist in planning and policy development under the premise we are constantly at Levels 1 or 2 of the Walker Model (strong cause/affect relationships; high levels of certainty/agreement). Such planning and policy approaches tend to assume the future will equal the past so rely on historical data and practices that typically treat assumptions as facts rather than best-guess estimates to be questioned and validated. As Thomas Kuhn suggests in his book ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’: “there is one thing that [Nations and Organisations] consistently never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged failure. They will never renounce or even question the overarching model on which they operate”. As we find ourselves staring down the barrel of persistent, severe and prolonged change, isn’t it time we tune into ‘Reality-FM’? We are in a time of deep uncertainty; and we have been for some time.
What needs to change?
In considering Hartley’s suggestion ‘the past as a foreign country’, a key shift will require us letting go of a decades-long infatuation with technology. I wrote a somewhat ‘tongue in cheek’ blog about that in June 2017. For some years now, many high profile pundits have been telling us that data is the new oil, the fuel that will drive the future: (Microsoft Chief Envisioning Officer, Dave Coplin; UK Evening Standard; Forbes; and in Feb 2020, India Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who proposes implementing policy where they “incorporate data in every step of value chains”).
The NZ Strategy for a Digital Public Service reads well and there have been some good progress in providing better access to digital services like on-line passports. That said, it remains, in my view, unduly focused on technology, indeed the various linked web documents are replete with tech-centric words and acronyms including ‘ICT’, ‘Digital’ and ‘Technology’ whereas ‘data’ and ‘information’ are hardly mentioned at all. Given this technology focus it is unsurprising that many Public Sector organisations pay lip service to any thought of or progress towards a National Information Infrastructure and are content to concentrate on their own ‘IT-knitting’. Indeed, the NZ State Sector Act 1988 reinforces such a situation, effectively setting up each agency as its own ‘Nation-State’ with agency-level outcomes and objectives.
Along with phrases like ‘data is the new oil’ is that other old chestnut ‘Information as a Strategic Asset’. We’ve seen many organisation claiming this as one of their core values or goals. My experience suggests that when asked what that means, most Senior Managers, and particularly Senior IT professions struggle to provide a satisfactory account or revert to technology-centric responses. This is not surprising. Given our infactuation with technology, most organisations have a small army of tech-professions, IT Strategies, IT asset registers, methodologies, (ITIL), depreciation models etc. for managing their technology, typically headed by a second-tier Chief Information Officer (CIO). I found an on-line CIO Job Description here, where the word ‘technology’ or ‘IT’ appears in every line of the nine CIO Responsibilities, whereas ‘data’ or ‘information’ do not appear at all. It implies that most CIOs are really ‘rebranded’ Chief Technology Officers or IT Managers.
For the sake of this conversation, if we accept for a moment that yes, data and information are assets; if not strategic ones, here is a radical, if not very simple question: what if we treated ‘Knowledge’ assets like we treated other assets?
Infonomics
I’ve been privileged to be part of the emerging discipline of ‘Infonomics’ which ‘’strives to apply both economic and asset management principles and practices to the valuation, handling and deployment of information assets’’. The team at the Wellington New Zealand start-up LINQ Ltd pioneered an infonomics-based methodology that models the flow of data within and between organisations as supply chains. Where manufacturing supply chains model how people, technologies and processes transform raw materials into products; information supply chains model how technology, processes and people transform raw data into information products.
Why is that important? Going back to the ‘Koi Tū: Centre for Informed Futures’ report where they propose transparent risk registers, pandemic response options and innovative thinking from multiple perspectives, they will all rely upon data-driven information products. In manufacturing you can have the best people, processes and technology, but without the raw materials they become moot. It is the same with Information Products; you can have the best technology and people in the world; which we do, but without ready access to relevant data your efforts are thwarted.
Managing Deep Uncertainty with On-Demand Information
New Zealand already has an example of a successful Information Infrastructure supporting strategic outcomes in conditions of Deep Uncertainty. In addition to the five NZ emergences described above was our biggest in a generation, the 2010-11 Christchurch earthquakes. In early 2011 a group of Public and Private Sector Information Professionals came together to implement a world class, award-winning information infrastructure for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA). (Read the whitepaper: ‘The CERA spatial data infrastructure: A model for government ICT delivery’)
The situation immediately after the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake was unprecedented, complex, at times chaotic and deeply uncertain. As one of the consultants and Information Architects at CERA, working out what was required was problematic. Taking a traditional approach in asking stakeholders what their information requirements were, most barely knew what they needed that day, let alone tomorrow, next week or next month. Suffice to say that once they did know what they wanted; they’d want it immediately. It turned out, THAT was the requirement i.e. “when we want information, we’ll want it immediately”. That was baked-into the goal of the CERA Information Infrastructure which was to provide:
The information needed
When it was needed
Where it was needed
In the form it was needed
With the ‘quality’ needed
For any purpose
For everyone involved in, interested in or impacted by the earthquake and recovery effort
I propose they are same goals for every Organisational and National information infrastructure today. At its peak, the CERA Information Infrastructure delivered, on-demand, over 4,000 datasets, in multiple formats, from 80 secure and public data services from 14 public and private sector organisations. It became a trusted source of truth for Ministers, Senior Managers, recovery-workers and the public. More than that, it delivered the one thing leaders in Organisations and Governments will crave in successfully navigating the coming waves of deep uncertainty; the information necessary for responding and adapting to continuous change.
Conclusion
The CERA Information Infrastructure demonstrated how we could use (then) existing data, technology and resources to realise the benefits described in the 2009 report on Spatial Information and would also meet the demands of the launched Koi Tū: Centre for Informed Futures report for ‘resilience to deal with rapid change’, ‘Counter misinformation’, ‘make sure people can access information they can trust’, ‘prepare for future disasters’. The NZ Digital Strategy is progressing technology and services availability and there have been some excellent local or individual agency initiatives: LINZ Property Data Management Framework; Canterbury [Region] Maps; NZ Geotechnical Database; Statistics NZ Open Government Data Programme) to name a few.
As a Nation, New Zealand seems to muddle along OK with occasional announcements from Ministers or Senior Officials of various ‘joined up Government’ initiatives, often with great fanfare, until we have another crisis. Then it is like watching reruns of Gilligan's Island, where each episode starts with some looney idea to get off the island, and things start off well, but then as the episode unfolds, things go wrong and eventually everyone ends up back where they started; still on the island. Similarly, with each new ‘unprecedented’ crisis, it is ‘everyone to the pumps’ before going back to whatever we were doing before. As a Nation we remain reluctant to step out of our comfort zone, refusing to question, as Thomas Kuhn put it, the overarching model on which we operate, even as the status quo becomes increasingly untenable. Just as we have a ‘National Military-Grade Military’, isn’t it time to commit to a National Military-Grade Information Infrastructure?
What would that look like? I have some further thoughts regards implementing such a framework in New Zealand. That will cover such areas as adaptive strategies based on the Walker research; discover-based-planning; the role and functions of data in the context of infonomics (people, technology and processes transforming raw data into business-ready information); ‘Lite’ versus ‘Heavy’ Governance; the agile policy framework; measurement and reporting (flags and triggers). However, having gotten to here in my blog, the reader may well need a cup of tea and a lay-down. I know I do! I’ll set those thoughts out in a subsequent Part 2 blog.
In ending I want to again acknowledge and applaud the many Information Warriors, here in New Zealand and around the world who always step up and are no doubt working tirelessly behind the scenes with the current COVID 19 pandemic. I reiterate this blog is not about demeaning your efforts but rather looking to a future where we maximise the options for a brighter future.
License & Copyright
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand (CC BY 3.0 NZ)
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose including commercially.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.