Global Information Infrastructure

 

"The good news from Washington is that every single person in Congress supports the concept of an information superhighway. The bad news is that no one has any idea what that means." ~ Cong. Edward J.  Markey[i]
As usually happens, I started out to write about the networked, National Automated System of Medical Records and to describe the horrors that await once it's implemented, I found information on something even more horrifying.  The use of the internet for nationalized medical records was just the beginning point for marketing the concept of a national information infrastructure (NII).  Once that idea was sold, the scope expanded to be a global information infrastructure (GII).  The redesign of U.S. government computer systems integrated into an international, networked system of "governance" will ultimately lead to the demise of the United States as a sovereign nation.   

 

High Performance Computing Act of 1991

 

Senator Al Gore sponsored and successfully ushered through the Congress, the High Performance Computing Act of 1991.  

 

High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 - Title I: High-Performance Computing and the National Research and Education Network - Directs the President to implement the National High-Performance Computing Program.
 
Sets forth Program requirements, including: (1) setting goals and priorities for Federal high-performance computing research, development, and networking; (2) providing for interagency coordination; (3) providing for oversight of the operation and evolution of the National Research and Education Network provided for in this Act; (4) improving software; (5) acceleration of high-performance computer system development; (6) technical support and research and development of software and hardware needed to address fundamental problems in science and engineering (Grand Challenges); (7) educating undergraduate and graduate students; and (8) providing for security.
 
Establishes an advisory committee on high-performance computing.
While there seems to be nothing earth shattering (pun intended) at this point, as the concept unfolds, the dark side begins to emerge.  Early in 1993, the Information Infrastructure Task Force[2] was formed.

 
 

Information Infrastructure Task Force

 

Organization
 

“All the key agencies involved in telecommunications and information policy are represented on the task force. The task force operates under the aegis of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic Council. Ron Brown, the Secretary of Commerce, chairs the IITF, and much of the staff work for the task force will be done by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the Department of Commerce.”

 

Mission

While the private sector will build and run virtually all of the National Information Infrastructure (NII), the President and the Vice President have stated clearly that the Federal government has a key leadership role to play in its development. Accordingly, the White House formed the Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) to articulate and implement the Administration's vision for the NII. The task force consists of high-level representatives of the Federal agencies that play a major role in the development and application of information technologies. Working together with the private sector, the participating agencies will develop comprehensive telecommunications and information policies that best meet the needs of both the agencies and the country. By helping build consensus on thorny policy issues, the IITF will enable agencies to make and implement policy more quickly and effectively.

A high-level Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure has been established by Executive Order to provide advice to the IITF. It will consist of representatives of the many different stakeholders in the NII, including industry, labor, academia, public interest groups, and state and local governments. The Secretary of Commerce will appoint the 25 members of the advisory committee.

The IITF is working closely with the High Performance Computing, Communications, and Information Technology (HPCCIT) Subcommittee of the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology (FCCSET), which is chaired by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The HPCCIT Subcommittee provides technical advice to the IITF and coordinates Federal research activities that support development of the National Information Infrastructure.		  
 
 

Excerpts

Executive Order 13011 - July 1996[3]

A Government that works better and costs less requires efficient and effective information systems. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and the Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996 provide the opportunity to improve significantly the way the Federal Government acquires and manages information technology. Agencies now have the clear authority and responsibility to make measurable improvements in mission performance and service delivery to the public through the strategic application of information technology. A coordinated approach that builds on existing structures and successful practices is needed to provide maximum benefit across the Federal Government from this technology.

(d) cooperate in the use of information technology to improve the productivity of Federal programs and to promote a coordinated, interoperable, secure, and shared Government wide infrastructure that is provided and supported by a diversity of private sector suppliers and a well-trained corps of information technology professionals; and

(e) establish an interagency support structure that builds on existing successful interagency efforts and shall provide expertise and advice to agencies; expand the skill and career development opportunities of information technology professionals; improve the management and use of information technology within and among agencies by developing information technology procedures and standards and by identifying and sharing experiences, ideas, and promising practices; and provide innovative, multi-disciplinary, project-specific support to agencies to enhance interoperability, minimize unnecessary duplication of effort, and capitalize on agency successes.

Sec. 3. Chief Information Officers Council. (a) Purpose and Functions. A Chief Information Officers Council ("CIO Council") is established as the principal interagency forum to improve agency practices on such matters as the design, modernization, use, sharing, and performance of agency information resources. The Council shall:

(1) develop recommendations for overall Federal information technology management policy, procedures, and standards;

(2) share experiences, ideas, and promising practices, including work process redesign and the development of performance measures, to improve the management of information resources;

(3) identify opportunities, make recommendations for, and sponsor cooperation in using information resources;

(4) assess and address the hiring, training, classification, and professional development needs of the Federal Government with respect to information resources management;

(5) make recommendations and provided advice to appropriate executive agencies and organizations, including advice to OMB on the Government wide strategic plan required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995; and

Sec. 4. Government Information Technology Services Board.

(a) Purpose and Functions. A Government Information Technology Services Board ("Services Board") is established to ensure continued implementation of the information technology recommendations of the National Performance Review and to identify and promote the development of innovative technologies, standards, and practices among agencies and State and local governments and the private sector. It shall seek the views of experts from industry, academia, and State and local governments on matters of concern to the Services Board as appropriate. The Services Board shall also make recommendations to the agencies, the CIO Council, OMB, and others as appropriate, and assist in the following:

(1) creating opportunities for cross-agency cooperation and intergovernmental approaches in using information resources to support common operational areas and to develop and provide shared Government wide infrastructure services;

(2) developing shared Government wide information infrastructure services to be used for innovative, multiagency information technology projects;

(3) creating and utilizing affinity groups for particular business or technology areas; and

(b) Membership. The Services Board shall be composed of individuals from agencies based on their proven expertise or accomplishments in fields necessary to achieve its goals. Major government mission areas such as electronic benefits, electronic commerce, law enforcement, environmental protection, national defense, and health care may be represented on the Services Board to provide a program operations perspective. Initial selection of members will be made by OMB in consultation with other agencies as appropriate. The CIO Council may nominate two members. The Services Board shall recommend new members to OMB for consideration. The Chair will be elected by the Services Board.

Sec. 9. Department of State. (a) The Secretary of State shall be responsible for liaison, consultation, and negotiation with foreign governments and intergovernmental organizations on all matters related to information resources management, including Federal information technology. The Secretary shall further ensure, in consultation with the Secretary of Commerce, that the United States is represented in the development of international standards and recommendations affecting information technology. In the exercise of these responsibilities, the Secretary shall consult, as appropriate, with affected domestic agencies, organizations, and other members of the public.

(b) The Secretary of State shall advise the Director on the development of United States positions and policies on international information policy and technology issues affecting Federal Government activities and the development of international information technology standards.

 

  
To grasp the magnitude of what they were doing, think of the United States as a corporation and the states as subsidiaries and the American people as simply factors of production (assets) of the corporation - no different than a chair, a desk or a truck.  Now consider that there was a hostile take over of the corporation and the OMB, Information Infrastructure Task Force and CIO Council are the team coming in to takeover the corporation and to restructure and redesign the operations of the corporation to conform to their ideas of how it should be operated.   Succinctly, they were moving their soldiers - information architects and engineers - into position and laying out the strategic plans for an administrative coup d’etat on the U.S. government.  That might sound like hyperbole and I wish it was, but it isn't.   
 

Federal Enterprise Architecture

 

GAO Description[4] 

 

In simplest terms, an enterprise is any purposeful activity, and an architecture is the structural description of an activity. Building on this, we can view enterprise architectures as systematically derived  and captured structural descriptions—in useful models, diagrams, and narrative—of the mode of operation for a given enterprise, which can be either a single organization or a functional or mission area that transcends more than one organizational boundary (e.g., financial management, homeland security). 		 
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The architecture can also be viewed as a blueprint that links an enterprise’s strategic plan to the programs and supporting systems that it intends to implement to accomplish the mission goals and objectives laid out in the strategic plan. As such, the architecture describes the enterprise’s operations in both logical terms (such as interrelated business processes and business rules, information needs and flows, and work locations and users) and

U.S.A. Inc.


Cover of the Federal Enterprise Architecture Publication[5]

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  such technical terms (such as hardware, software, data, communications, and security attributes and performance standards). Moreover, it provides these perspectives both for the enterprise’s current (or “as-is”) environment and for its targeted future (or “to-be”) environment, as well as for the transition plan for moving from the “as-is” to the “tobe” environment.  

Reinvention of Government

The redesign of government processes and information systems was the 'Reinvention of Government'. 
 
 

 

Reinventing Government
Jesse Allan Gordon 1994 [6]
 
The National Performance Review (NPR) is the federal government's implementation of the concepts of reinventing government. "Reinvention" is supposed to be not just a euphemism for reform, but a basic restructuring of the way we operate and think about government. Al Gore's version, as outlined in the NPR, is based on the general concepts established in the Osborne and Gaebler book entitled "Reinventing Government" (ReGo). Al Gore had to make many compromises of the basic ReGo concepts to make them applicable and acceptable to the federal government. This article will discuss the weaknesses which result from those compromises, and how Gore's NPR is not "reinvention," but only a small first step towards real reinvention. Gore's compromises, furthermore, are not entirely due to the necessities of bipartisan politics, but are also based on Gore's (un-reinvented) deep belief that government is the solution to every problem that America faces.

The basic concepts of reinvention are: 1) Government should steer rather than row -- that is, government should provide a framework for the operation of programs, rather than actually operating programs itself; 2) Government should focus on outcomes (desired results) and needs of customers (service recipients), rather than inputs (dollars and jobs) and needs of bureaucracies (rules); 3) Government should decentralize and "de-layer" -- that is, address problems from the lowest level of government feasible; 4) Public agencies should compete with private agencies, should incorporate profit-motivation and entrepreneurialism, and should adopt a market orientation wherever possible; and 5) Government which work betters also costs less -- that is, changing the system will result in a more efficient government which minimizes duplication and waste, and hence will reduce the budget deficit. The underlying rationale is that our current system of government was invented as an Industrial Age methodology, designed to achieve Progressive Era goals of fighting corruption; we now need a "reinvented" Information Age methodology, designed to fight over-spending.

 

  
So the concept of privatization of government and the reorientation towards a corporate model and mindset - including profit-making came out of the Clinton Administration and was the result of the redesign of government processes.  

 

 

Global Information Infrastructure

 

 

Gore’s biography on the Government Information website has this to say about the legislation[7]
 
  Vice President Gore also is a nationally recognized leader on technology. When he was a member of the U.S. Senate, Gore introduced and steered to passage the High Performance Computing Act to create a national, high-speed computer network and increase research and development of high-performance technologies. That legislation was signed into law in 1991, and is now part of President Clinton's technology and economic plan, the National Information Infrastructure, to help move the United States into the 21st Century.

 

To help strengthen and support democracy and economic development in countries throughout the world, Vice President Gore proposed the development of a Global Information Infrastructure. He led the U.S. delegation to the inauguration of the first freely elected President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, and has worked closely with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to build a partnership between the two former adversaries. The Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission was formed by Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin to foster economic cooperation between their nations, particularly on the issues of space cooperation, business, science and technology, defense conversion, energy and the environment. His leadership was critical in getting passage through Congress of the historic North American Free Trade Agreement.		  
 

Having already researched the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, NAFTA and Public Law 87-297 the agenda was immediately recognizable.  Al Gore's run the presidency was to have been the convergence - a One World Communist System of 'governance'.  During the Clinton Administration, Al Gore did everything possible he could do to get ready for it - including bringing Mikhail Gorbachev and his Communist organization, 'State of the World Forum' to San Francisco - to the Presidio no less.  The symbolism doesn't get much more obvious than that. 

Excerpts from a speech given by Vice President Al Gore to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) on March 21, 1994:[8]
 
  I have come here, 8,000 kilometers from my home, to ask you to help create a Global Information Infrastructure.  

 

The ITU was created only 14 years later, in major part for the purpose of fostering an internationally compatible system of telegraphy.

 

For almost 150 years, people have aspired to fulfill Hawthorne's vision -- to wrap nerves of communications around the globe, linking all human knowledge.

 

In this decade, at this conference, we now have at hand the technological breakthroughs and economic means to bring all the communities of the world together. We now can at last create a planetary information network that transmits messages and images with the speed of light from the largest city to the smallest village on every continent.

 

I am very proud to have the opportunity to address the first development conference of the ITU because President Clinton and I believe that an essential prerequisite to sustainable development, for all members of the human family, is the creation of this network of networks. To accomplish this purpose, legislators, regulators, and business people must do this: build and operate a Global Information Infrastructure. This GII will circle the globe with information superhighways on which all people can travel.

 

These highways -- or, more accurately, networks of distributed intelligence -- will allow us to share information, to connect, and to communicate as a global community. From these connections we will derive robust and sustainable economic progress, strong democracies, better solutions to global and local environmental challenges, improved health care, and -- ultimately -- a greater sense of shared stewardship of our small planet.

 

The Global Information Infrastructure will help educate our children and allow us to exchange ideas within a community and among nations. It will be a means by which families and friends will transcend the barriers of time and distance. It will make possible a global information marketplace, where consumers can buy or sell products.

 

I ask you, the delegates to this conference, to set an ambitious agenda that will help all governments, in their own sovereign nations and in international cooperation, to build this Global Information Infrastructure. For my country's part, I pledge our vigorous, continued participation in achieving this goal -- in the development sector of the ITU, in other sectors and in plenipotentiary gatherings of the ITU, and in bilateral discussions held by our Departments of State and Commerce and our Federal Communications Commission. 		  
That all sounds very exciting - to be able to deliver high quality education to the most primitive areas of the world; to be able to connect businesses in the United States to India; to be able to give citizens an easy way to communicate with the government.  The problem is that they never considered, or perhaps they did consider (because Clinton signed the Millennium Declaration on September 8, 2000 calling for global governance)  the harsh realities of what a system like this would do to the world - not just the United States.

The world is not one big happy global village - and it never will be.  These are just a few of the problems - and they won’t occur all at once but they will occur over time:

 

  • First, the implementation of computer systems to replace manual processes in any corporation or government is done for the purpose of cost and resource minimalization.  Minimalization means doing more with fewer people and fewer resources.  As a consequence of the globalized, information network and a global economy, there will be far fewer opportunities to make a living to feed one's self - let alone succeed in life.   

 

  • Secondly, to have a truly global information infrastructure, all governments have to function in the same way administratively - hence you have the harmonization of government operations through the implementation of ‘standards and best practices’ which are nothing more than the dictates of a central coordinating authority - in the case of the global information network, that would be the system designers.  In an individual corporation, there is nothing wrong with this.  In a global networked system, it reduces the world to a cookie-cutter ‘World of One’. 

 

  • Third, the big corporations will wipe out small business.  On a global network, if an individual invents something truly great and he tries to sell it on the internet, the idea will be stolen - or he will be bought out by one of the big corporations.  If he doesn’t sell it on the internet, he has no business.  So you will have no real, new businesses - only facades of new businesses owned by the big corporate players.  We see that already with America's largest corporations that control many brands - all owned by the same corporation.  

 

  • You will have no competition among business because the big corporations will defeat the smaller ones by competitive advantages of scale.  And the big corporations will cannibalize each other until there is only one left standing.  A look at the U.S. mass communications market is good example - Time Warner, News Corporation, CNN, General Electric and Disney.  Together these 5 corporations control virtually everything you read, see and hear.  And if the FCC is successful at allowing further consolidation, the 5 will become 3 and ultimately will become 1.  We've already seen this happen with the PC operating system market.  Microsoft is a monopoly and at any point they choose, they can and have put other software producers out of business.

 

  • The logic of the global ‘free trade’ system becomes apparent when you understand the global information network and creation of global monopolies.  The problem is that - and we already see this, production and information administration moves to the cheapest labor markets because the number one goal of a corporation is to make profits - ever increasing profits.  This virtually mandates that countries drop the standard of living of their citizens in order to compete with the cheapest labor markets (which they can never do btw).

 

  • As productive economic activity moves to the cheapest labor markets, the tax base collapses, poverty, hunger and homelessness increase causing dissent, police state measures are implemented which causes more dissent and eventually, the government will collapse.  

 

  • Mass migration is also the result of the global trading system.  As economic opportunities dry up in their communities, people move to where they perceive there are opportunities.  The United States is experiencing mass migration from Mexico and countries south.  Europe is experiencing mass migration from Middle Eastern countries.  And this is occurring at the same time that production and information administration jobs are moving to China and India - the least cost labor markets. 

 

  • Governments like the United States government become increasingly corporatized in order to survive how ever briefly that might be.  Collectivist computer systems will be developed to shift costs from the private sector to the public sector as businesses struggle to survive in a global networked world where they can’t compete - no matter what they do.  Examples of these systems include the National Medical Records Administration system - that will lead to socialized medicine; the Global Freight Transportation network - nationalized Freight Asset Tracking System and the redesigned U.S. transportation infrastructure to facilitate the 'global supply chain'; the full-blown transportation surveillance system (GPS tracking of movement, cameras, RFID chipped driver's licenses and passports, etc.) because of the inherent dangers of the global supply chain; the National Human Resource Development system - combined workforce-education records for national management of labor;  the inventory and tracking of agricultural assets including animals which will eventually become a National Management System of Agriculture and Food Resources just to name a few.

 

  • The corporatization of the government eliminates the concept of citizenship and individual sovereignty and freedom as people are inducted to labor for the survival of the state.
     
  • There is no way to maintain security and privacy because those concepts are contradictory with sharing and openness on a global networked information system.       

 

The heartbreaking part of this is that none of it needs to happen but it is in the interest of the people with money to crush the institutions that exist to make a civilized world.  Humanity and civil society are an overhead cost with no direct payback into the pockets of the globalist leaders.  Despite all the sugary talk about bringing knowledge to all corners of the world and reducing poverty, it will never happen and I will leave to your imagination the vision of the future that is inevitable if we continue on this path.

 

Information is Knowledge

Knowledge is Power

A Global Information System is Absolute Power

That is corrupting absolutely - globally

 
Other Related Commentaries and Documents:

Outsourcing Overhead
Global Supply Chain Management
A Human Resources Plan for the United States
Real ID
Real ID - A 'Global Security Envelope of Identity Management'
IBM and Dr. Mengele Together Again
Guest Worker Program - Slave Trading and Management System
NAFTA Superhighway History
Inventory of Agriculture Assets - 'Big Brother Snoop At It Again'
Public School - Student Information Management System - more to it than meets the eye
What Does It Mean To Be A Jelly Bean?

Nationalized Medical Records

Digital Fascism of the Dons of Davos

War in the Context of Everything Else (WICEE)
         Introduction
         Part 2 - Bad Seed from Tennessee
         Part 3 - Slave Masters Rise Again
         Part 4 - The Global Ponzi Scheme
         Part 5 - Digital Coup d'etat     * The End *

 
 

[1] Ibiblio Online Public Library, University of North Carolina, “The Information Infrastructure Task Force”

http://www.ibiblio.org/nii/NII-Task-Force.html
 

[2] Jonathan D. Blake, “The National Information Infrastructure Initiative and the Emergence of the Electronic Superhighway”,  http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v46/no3/blake.html#FN1

 

[3] Federal Register, Vol. 61, No. 140, July 19, 1996, Presidential Documents, Executive Order 13011, FR pgs 37657-37662 http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=1996_register&docid=fr19jy96-133.pdf
 

[4] Testimony before the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census, Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, “Information Technology:  The Federal Enterprise Architecture and Agencies’ Enterprise Architectures Are Still Maturing”, Statement of Randolph C. Hite, Director, Information Technology Architecture and Systems Issues, May 19, 2004, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04798t.pdf


[5] Federal Enterprise Architecture manual, Version 2.0, November 17, 2005, sponsored by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council http://www.channelingreality.com/Documents/Fed_Ent_Architecture_DRM_2_0_Final.pdf

 

[6] Reprinted from "Spectrum, the Public Policy Journal of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University", 1994, "Reviewing the National Performance Review:  A Critique of Reinventing Government", Jesse Alan Gordon, 1994, original link:  http://webmerchants.com/spectrum/npr.htm, recovered by Wayback, http://www.channelingreality.com/NWO_WTO/Documents/Jesse_Allan_Gordon_NPR_Review_1994.pdf

[7] Government Information Website, Biography of Al Gore Jr., Vice President of the United States  http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/status/bios/gore.htm   Note:  typo in original text ‘more’ was changed to ‘move’.


[8] National Archives and Records Administration, Presidency of William J. Clinton, Office of the Vice President, VP Remarks, International Telecommunications Union, March 21, 1994, http://clinton1.nara.gov/White_House/EOP/OVP/html/telunion.html

Vicky Davis
April 20, 2008