From the Ground Up

CSO Magazine’s March issue has a very interesting article on building the Department of Homeland Security, called From the Ground Up. Todd Datz explores the bureaucratic and political contexts of the creation of DHS. Interesting stuff.

In my experience, absolutely no bureaucractic entity (yuck, dabbler–don’t talk like that!) is truly created from the ground up. There’s always an organizational context, a political context, legacy data, system integration issues, staffing issues–and it’s impossible (and rarely desirable) to remove those contexts and continuities from the new organization’s environment. On the other hand, the usual object is to move the organizational focus, which is nearly always gainful (and painful). This article explores how those things played on in the Homeland Security context; the scale’s different from mine, but the issues are familiar. Looking forward to Todd’s followup article….

Link courtesy of CIO Magazine‘s KM Newsletter.

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