22 Oct 1999
Coherent Policy-making Beyond the Information Barrier
Circumventing dependence on access, classification, penetration,
dissemination, property, surveillance, interpretation, disinformation, and credibility
- / -
Paper prepared for the Workshop on Information in the Policy
Process Project,
organized by the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development
(http://www.nautilus.org)
and the World Affairs Council (San Francisco, December 1999)
Abstract: Review of possibilities to enable policy-makers, notably
in developing countries, to embrace a strategically realistic vision of the
networking revolution that harnesses the opportunities and confronts the challenges
of that revolution. It is argued that it is vital that the advantages of networking
technology be adapted to enable policy-makers and their constituencies to
navigate fruitfully in a sea of conflicting initiatives, perspectives, overload,
and unforeseen challenges and opportunities. Reviews the kinds of knowledge-base
facilities that can capture contextual insights in support of action- oriented
dialogue under such circumstances, taking into account the conceptual richness
associated with non-linear, visual, aural and narrative presentations (that
offer strategic advantages to non- western cultures) in responding to complex
crises.
- A. Introduction
- B. Questionable information strategy dependencies
- Access | Classification | Penetration
- Dissemination | Property | Surveillance
- Interpretation | Disinformation | Credibility
- C. Visibility and transparency
- D. Challenge of coherence
- E. Using unexplored advantages of networking technology
- Sustaining new conceptual processes
- Avoiding distracting dependence on certainties
- Vulnerability to policy surprises
- Beyond the single perspective: Enhancing the ability to act in the absence
of consensus
- Building on existing initiatives – rather than undermining them
- F. Governance through metaphor
- Metaphoric enhancement of policy-making in response to information overload
- Metaphoric empowerment of the disadvantaged
- Networking technology as a powerful metaphor
- G. Strategic alternatives for information
- Evoking resonance patterns
- Strategic cross-fertilization – beyond the delivery model
- Configuring strategic dilemmas for intersectoral dialogue
- Enhancing comprehension of complexity through multi-media information
interfaces
- Promoting strategic short-cuts through networking technology
- Enabling perception-sensitive policy-making
- Supporting strategic nimbleness through networking technology
- Using networking technology to channel social unrest
- Enabling emergence and integration of new policy paradigms
- Ensuring emergence of integrative mnemonic cues
- Enhancing strategic dialogue through networking technology
- Enabling governance with a lighter touch
- H. Conclusion
- References
A. Introduction
This paper responds directly to the fundamental, and urgent, policy dilemma
of the role of networking technology in the immediate future and the concerns
expressed about its effects on those with limited access. It assumes that both
of the extreme scenarios that have been identified (viz. the reduction or increase
in socio-economic gaps) will manifest to some degree over the next decade. Highly
credible evidence for the preponderance of each will be available to those subscribing
to, or opposing, either outcome. Contrary evidence will be discredited or denied
by both. This corresponds to the evolution of the development situation over
the past decade -- the condition of the few improves according to selected criteria
and that of the many can be presented as static or declining dramatically. This
has been exemplified in the debate over the crises and opportunities of globalization.
The paper is designed to contribute towards enabling policy-makers in developing
countries and transitional economies to embrace a strategically realistic vision
of the networking revolution that harnesses the opportunities and confronts
the challenges of that revolution. It is therefore assumed that it is vital
that the advantages of networking technology be adapted to enable policy-makers
and their constituencies to navigate fruitfully in a sea of conflicting initiatives,
perspectives and unforeseen challenges and opportunities. The paper indicates
the kinds of knowledge-base facilities that can capture contextual insights
in support of action-oriented dialogue under such circumstances, taking into
account the conceptual richness associated with visual, aural and narrative
presentations that offer strategic advantages to non-western cultures.
The paper argues that the challenge to policy-makers in developing countries
and transitional economies is not one of more information but rather of surfeit
of information with contradictory strategic implications. The networking revolution,
as currently understood, promises to deliver even more information thus aggravating
the problem to which it should supposedly provide some remedy. This dilemma
is not resolved by producing more authoritative reports that will themselves
be subject to their own challenges. The focus is therefore on how to adapt networking
technology to facilitate the task of policy-makers and their constituencies
in understanding and responding to the immediate challenges they face using
new kinds of knowledge tools better adapted to their cultures and knowledge
preferences. The approach is designed to elicit realistic low cost approaches
relevant to the situation of those in developing countries.
B. Questionable information strategy dependencies
Policy-making can be claimed to be primarily focused, and dysfunctionally dependent,
on the following approaches to information. Their limitations need to be explored
in the light of the challenges to governance in the future.
In societies subject to rapid change and transformation, the dependencies below
leave much to be desired in terms of viable information support for policy-making.
With the rapid development of new information technologies, and their availability
in many countries and at many levels of society, the question becomes how policy-making
is to position and organize itself in relation to new opportunities. To facilitate
the emergence of coherent policy-making, with respect to each of these dependencies,
ways must be found to circumvent the constraints that they imply:
B.1: Access
Present: A major concern for any person or group in the policy process
is "access". This is in most cases defined in terms of access to the
person most capable of supplying valued information or most critically positioned
to receive and act on information relating to a critical decision. But the efforts
by policy-makers (especially as candidates) to gain access to the attention
of voters through massive public relations (and increasingly electronic) campaigns
is also a major consideration. Access-fixation is the prime mode of lobbyists.
It encourages every form of bribery, subtle, legal or otherwise -- and influence-peddling
in all its forms. The latter quickly engenders a class of policy-maker focused
on the benefits to be derived from greater access -- a major challenge in developing
and transitional countries.
As the decision-making process increases in complexity in a democratic society,
and the number of interested parties increases, "access" as an effective
process becomes increasingly problematic. This may be simply described in terms
of the difference between 5 people endeavouring to acquire access to one person,
as opposed to the effort by 50, 500, or 1,000. Most democratic policy arenas
currently operate under the naive assumption that the number of legitimately
accredited lobbyists will not significantly increase (cf the case of NGOs seeking
access to the United Nations). What is to be concluded from the 10,000 lobbyists
supposedly active in 1999 in relation to the European Commission in Brussels
-- and what will the number be in 10 years, when the EU increases to 25-plus
countries? What is likely to be the response of someone being "accessed"
by such numbers?
The classic fallback in the event of access-saturation, practised by court
chamberlains throughout the centuries, is to impose filters. But whether in
terms of policy-relevant information content or criteria of democratic process,
it is questionable how much filtration can be realistically or usefully imposed.
Concern with privileged access, reflects a fundamental lack of faith in the
democratic process, in the capacity of its citizens, and in democratic procedures
for making policy-relevant information accessible. It is ironic in 1999 that
the new King of Jordan felt obliged to travel his own city in disguise to gather
information -- after having being individually greeted by several thousand citizens
on his accession.
Reframed: The access process needs to be reframed and transformed. Clearly
networking technology enables much more effective, and precisely formulated,
dissemination of messages to and from policy-makers. It also enables much more
effective spamming. The challenge is to explore (notably through simulations)
much more effective ways of filtering and channelling communications. On the
policy side this implies structuring filters to forward incoming messages to
appropriate destinations from which intelligent answers can be furnished --
whether or not their generation is automated.
The emerging vigorous efforts to communicate electronically with voters concerning
policy options -- to gain access to them -- may soon be matched by the efforts
of myriad government departments and lobbyists (eg surveys, communiques, information,
etc). Citizens can expect to be the subject of access barrages far beyond current
levels of commercial advertising. For policy-makers and others endeavouring
to communicate with relevant external partners, the challenge is to find ways
of personalizing such communications intelligently so as to be appropriately
channelled by recipient filters. Given the future quantities of information
and communicators, a key concern will be how to automatically redistribute (and
respond to) communications to avoid dysfunctional overload of any individual.
To the extent that none of these mechanisms is experienced as satisfactory,
new approaches will be required to face-to-face communications.
It is to be expected that all these innovations will be accompanied by new
kinds of abuse -- electronic replications of influence peddling techniques.
A key question will be how to reduce the quantity of information to be disseminated
and absorbed, especially through new ways of conceptual packaging so as to compress
its significance. This is as true of the policy-maker highly reluctant to attend
to "more than a page, double-spaced" as it is of other recipients
with a cold-call attention span of "17 seconds".
B.2: Security classification
Present: Vast quantities of information are subject to security classification,
notably information relating to access to information (cf encryption technology,
cyberwar techniques, surveillance technology, etc) or on topics deemed to be
"sensitive". In principle classified information is especially relevant
to policy-making or to the justification of existing policies. It is also deemed
vital to maintaining competitive advantage, whether understood in terms of national
physical security or extended to include economic security.
There is a marked tendency to classify information relating to any new threat
in order to prevent "public panic" and to facilitate the already complex
task of policy-makers. This effectively designs potentially vital resources
out of the decision-making process and leads to a confrontational relationship
with those to whom the decisions are eventually presented for approval and action.
Examples include: health information relating to the BSE crisis in the UK.
Given the quantity of classified information, the impression is created that
public policy is constrained by secrets too shocking to be integrated into the
stated rationale of public policy and on which newly elected officials must
be secretly briefed. Civil servants, even in intergovernmental organization,
sign non-disclosure agreements. Classified archives of such organizations are
shredded prior to their release date to avoid embarassment to member governments.
Awareness of the degree of classification, and rumours as to their nature, continues
to educate the public to be cynical about public statements by authorities endeavouring
to motivate them.
Reframed: The issue of message security is widely debated, as is the
challenge of circumventing it. The difficulties are almost certain to get much
worse. To bypass these issues new approaches are required which distinguish
between kinds of information that lend themselves to classification and those
that do not call for it -- or for which the resources are not available.
The key here would seem to be a new understanding of the kinds of information
that policy-makers can effectively process. It could prove to be the case that
the challenges of governance do not depend upon the kind of information which
tends to get classified and subject to restrictive distribution. In principle,
at least, such information is necessarily excluded from democratic decision
making -- however it may be used for certain "covert operations".
B.3: Penetration
Present: Where "access" cannot be obtained by due process,
especially faced with security classification, intelligence agencies are called
upon by policy-makers to penetrate into the arenas of concern, some of which
may be labelled as unfriendly or actively hostile to such inquiry. This ranges
from "research" through to classical and industrial espionage. Policy-makers,
or those with appropriate security clearances, are then faced with the dilemma
of how to act upon such information, especially when they are not able to release
it to the public to seek justification for their actions. The mess surrounding
the US missile attack on a factory in the Sudan, and the subsequent inability
to justify it, "for security reasons", is an example.
Penetration raises major issues of right to privacy and confidentiality. As
a mode it invites counter-penetration and the attention of hackers, all of which
has established forms of cyber-warfare and cyber-terrorism which can only escalate
in replication of the arms race and the Cold War -- with the added twist that
it takes place between declared allies. The power, and legal right, to penetrate
can be seen as significantly eroding the kinds of principles elaborated in international
treaties.
Reframed: Preoccupation with penetration could well prove to be a totally
obsolete approach that assumes an ability to gain access, and maintain control,
through a hierarchically orchestrated program. Just as there have been shown
to be limitations to the effective depth of organization hierarchies for management
purposes in modern society, it may become obvious that penetration is not what
ensures the sympathy of the penetrated or their entrainment to a desired end.
Stated metaphorically penetration relies on "masculine" invasiveness
that is liable to build resistance and resentment, denying "feminine"
associative involvement vital to building sustainable community to which policy
is supposed to be relevant. The strengths of intelligence penetration may be
seen in the Kosovo and Gulf War campaigns, but its limitation may be seen in
its subsequent irrelevance to the building of a sustainable community.
B.4: Dissemination
Present: Successful access and penetration is followed by preoccupation
with dissemination -- "getting the message out". The obsession with
mailing lists, unsolicited communication, and every form of advertising, is
an indication of this concern. It has become fundamental to electoral campaigns
and the communication of political intentions. Successful election is now closely
correlated with the dissemination budget, as with any product marketing. Most
intergovernmental agencies expend significant proportions of their budget on
"public information". The 1990s "cash for questions" scandal
in Westminster has demonstrated the extent to which parliamentarians -- even
in the "Mother of Parliaments" -- can be purchased to disseminate
particular messages.
Despite this, however, it is clear that both resistance to such messages ("propaganda
fatigue"?), and competition between mutually contradictory messages, severely
undermines the possibility of any coherent policy and its effective support.
Where the totalitarian route is not followed, protagonists may be tempted to
trash opposing policies or their supporters, thus creating further turbulence.
Reframed: As with penetration, dissemination places the emphasis on
an active source and passive receptors, typically termed "targets"
in marketing parlance. In a complex society, few people would choose to define
themselves as static, passive targets. Consequently communicating policy is
increasingly a matter of engaging some form of dialogue with elusive partners
who are increasingly equipped to evade targetted messages, however effectively
they may seem to be delivered. Some potential targets -- notably policy-makers
themselves --are now effectively heavily armoured, "en-fortressed"
and protected by guardians. (For a development of these points see: http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs/targets.php)
People are exposed to a variety of messages which are evaluated less for their
impact than for their import and longer-term consequence. Ironically, "hits"
in the music industry suggest that a product may "fly" for reasons
other than the extent to which people may have been targetted by message dissemination
campaigns. This is a challenge for policies of the future.
B.5: Property
Present: There is increasing focus on the potential of information as
property, notably in the form of intellectual property (patents, copyright,
etc). The ultimate form of "access" is "acquisition". Like
voters, policy-makers may be bought, as exemplified in the process through which
director-generals of intergovernmental organizations are elected (cf media astonishment
at lobbying for election of the DG of UNESCO in 1999, or multinational "sponsorship"
of the WTO gathering in 1999). Such accepted practices would be condemned by
international observers in the case of elections in countries whose foreign
policies are bought in this way. The acceptance of "quid pro quo"
as a consequence of campaign funding support now completely conditions policy-making
by elected representatives in many countries held to be models of democracy.
Ironically, political factions and parties derive their identities in large
part from "their" policies -- effectively their property. Policies
themselves can thus be treated as property so that one party may need to avoid
at all costs any accusation that it is using the property of another party.
From a policy perspective, there is a conflict between information held as
property and the potential value of that information with respect to the handling
of a social issue or crisis. It is clearly in the interest of entrepreneurs
to acquire information and make it available at whatever price the market will
bear -- even if many are thereby excluded from this possibility. Many creative
consultants have copyrighted models relevant to policy-making that may only
be used under appropriate licensing arrangements.
The question arises as to how society could be held to ransom in order to acquire
access to the ultimate policy model capable of solving multiple social problems.
Similar questions arise with energy- or resource-conserving patents. In war
time, government may be free to bypass the niceties of copyright law and seize
such models "in the interest of national security". In peace time,
as with encryption and military-relevant technology, legislation may be passed
to ensure government control of innovation and dissemination to potentially
hostile powers -- or competitors for market share.
Of central concern is the policy implications of intellectual property that
may be of major benefit to those without the means to meet the market price
(as with some pharmaceutical products, notably relating to AIDS in Africa).
At what point does the issue of "global security" supersede that of
commercial benefit?
Reframed: Is there a way for policy-makers to circumvent or reframe
the challenges of intellectual property? Can copyright holders be made responsible
for harmful impacts resulting from use (or withholding) of their intellectual
property -- as with irresponsible sale of products to minors or rogue states?
The key question is whether what can be copyrighted is what is vital to the
processes of more coherent governance.
Conventional approaches assume that policy problems can be "solved"
by acquiring control of key intellectual property or know how (and possibly
disallowing it to others). Thus energy problems could supposedly be solved by
a device to produce cheap energy; and bio-tech advances offer the possibility
of disseminating patented viruses to inhibit human fertility in order to regulate
population levels.
Whilst a policy problem may appear to be solved by such devices, this in fact
distracts from the new policy challenges of governing use of any accessible
device, those emerging, and especially their relationship to other social and
technical innovations. Gadget-fixation distracts from the policy art required
for a community to live with gadgets, their creation, their consequences, and
their obsolescence. It is questionable whether that art can be converted into
intellectual copyright.
B.6: Surveillance
Present: In order to anticipate events on which vital decisions may
be required, the penetration process is increasingly systematized through electronic
information gathering techniques. These may be implemented through simple phone
taps and security cameras, or through much more complex systems and tracers
on telephone and internet traffic -- including the supposedly non-existent Echelon
system (now the subject of deep concern in the European Parliament, see: http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/166499/execsum.htm).
Isolated cases may be justified by local security considerations and as a constraint
on crime. Systemic surveillance may be justified as a constraint on financial
fraud and terrorism.
However the systems, themselves subject to security classification (like Echelon),
may also be used to advance and protect economic, political and other interests
without public knowledge or approval, or consideration by elected representatives
supposedly responsible. Again it is seldom clear for whom surveillance information
is officially prepared and who benefits from it unofficially. The emergence
of a Big Brother society, and the parallels with totalitarians systems have
been frequently noted.
Reframed: It is questionable for how long policy-makers can effectively
control a society through widespread surveillance. The East German use of Stasi
informers is perhaps the best example of the strengths and weaknesses of this
approach. It is doubtful whether an electronic version would be successful for
longer. The social costs are very high and they again raise the question "to
what end".
If the purpose of surveillance is to ensure that information is generated and
transferred to bodies capable of acting upon it, it is useful to ask whether
this is not accomplished far more efficiently (at far less cost) through a richly
developed civil society. In such circumstances a very wide, and continually
renewed, variety of groups is constantly checking and responding to initiatives
that are felt to be inappropriate.
In a sense civil society is made up of "indicator groups" that monitor
the checks and balances of society -- as well as each other. The role of policy-making
is then to sustain the pattern of checks and balances by facilitating the activities
of these groups, rather than taking over their roles and rendering itself immune
to oversight. The relationship might be compared to gardener and garden -- with
the gardener striving to improve the quality of the garden rather than to micro-manage
the relationships between the species in it.
B.7: Central interpretation, collation and synthesis
Present: Massive information gathering, instigated in support of policy
concerns, gives rise to major problems of collation, interpretation and synthesis
in arriving at meaningful options. The process is also fraught with the possibility
of major errors, as exemplified by the three "outdated map" issues
of 1998-9 (cf. Italian cable car disaster, Chinese embassy bombing in Belgrade,
and the map used in Helsinki to negotiate the Russian presence in Kosovo).
Methods of systematizing the task through personal profiling and other models
can lead to abusive, invasive consequences that are a matter of increasing public
concern. It is increasingly the practice for authoritative studies to be commissioned
to support particular policy perspectives and dismiss alternatives. A highly
respected advocate of alternative economic scenarios, Hazel Henderson, discovered
that it was unnecessary to persuade economists holding views opposed to her
policy arguments -- they could simply be hired to produce studies in support
of these alternative views.
It is highly questionable whether intelligence resources of the appropriate
quality can be applied in such a way as to highlight the most appropriate options
for consideration. But by taking on this role, and applying vast resources to
it, authorities take on a responsibility which they may not be able to fulfil.
Reframed: It is assumed that policy-makers develop and maintain bodies
capable of interrelating and synthesizing all the information that can be gathered.
The visible manifestation of this ability is the semi-official policy think-tanks.
Can it be said that their processes and insights have proved of value to the
challenges of contemporary governance? They have indeed been valuable in the
drafting of specific proposals as a basis for legislation. But their success
diminishes rapidly as the range of issues increases -- namely at the core of
the challenge to modern governance of a complex society. It is not clear that
the richly funded equivalent functions of secret intelligence agencies are able
to do any better, however skilled they may be in undermining initiatives to
which they are opposed.
Again the challenge is what is the nature of the integration of knowledge and
insight that would offer meaningful new options to the policy-making process?
How should information technology be assisting the knowledge integration process
across sectors? How should it be assisting the challenges to comprehension of
complexity -- in anticipation of communicating insights to wider audiences with
whom consultation and dialogue may be appropriate? Given the advances in modelling
techniques, it is curious that the highly controversial (and much hyped) process
of "globalization" does not seem to have been the subject of any form
of simulation that might have identified vulnerabilities such as experienced
in the 1998 Asian financial crisis, or others to come. Simulation seems to be
significantly absent as a guide to major policy-making processes.
Why is it that application of relevant technology is always much further advanced
with respect to videogames than to policy processes -- to the point that the
military in 1999 is commissioning videogame makers for realistic simulations?
As with the brain itself, might it not be the case that distributed intelligence
-- as illustrated by the development of the Web -- offers greater possibility
of effective synthesis than efforts to acquire, interpret and synthesize such
insight in one single cell at which it is held as a secret monopoly?
B.8: Disinformation
Present: One prime use of information collected is to gain competitive
advantage through destabilizing policy opponents. This is especially useful
when the quality of information collected is inadequate to suggest more creative
policy options. Information may be effectively used to ensure that fruitful
relationships in support of policy alternatives are rendered unsustainable,
notably through the use of media "leaks", or more actively through
a wide range of news management and propaganda techniques, extending into psychological
warfare. Typically most serious opponents requiring military intervention are
stigmatized as morally or sexually perverted, drug addicts, or even, in some
cases, as cannibals.
There are few indications that information collection and collation leads to
new insights into social organization of value as policy options, rather than
as opportunities to reinforce current policies.
Reframed: Use of disinformation strategies by policy-makers has a long
and honourable tradition. It was possibly first articulated by Sun Tzu. More
recently it has been honoured by such names as "The Great Game", and
as a game the value of bluff is admired and associated with good card playing
skills. Efforts to destigmatize it are linked to its presentation as "news
management" as an extension of normal public relations. It is in this respect
that claims for its positive functions for society as a whole are made. It is
interesting that the first director of the UN Public Information Programme was
previously responsible for war propaganda in his own country -- presumably to
maintain the motivation and spirit of the population in support of the war effort,
as proved to be the case with NATO propaganda during the Kosovo crisis. To what
extent is this approach appropriate in response to major crises of contemporary
society?
When is it necessary for policy-makers to maintain an upbeat news flow (the
"Good News") and to minimize any discouraging news? What happens when
the population has increasing access to alternative sources of information that
effectively question and discredit the information officially provided? What
responsibilities are policy-makers taking upon themselves when they selectively
present upbeat information (as in the case of the UK BSE crisis, or genetically
modified food)?
It would appear that a more fruitful approach would integrate an understanding
that the many disseminators of information are effectively engaging in selective
presentations of policy-relevant information. Each has a "take" and
an "angle" that they would prefer to others. The challenge is to create
a context in which these different takes can play off against each other so
as to encourage a richer approach to the issues, whilst protecting those who
need to be sustained by upbeat news. It is the challenge parents face with regard
to (dis)information concerning Father Christmas or the tooth fairy.
B.9: Credibility
Present: In the presence of so much disinformation and hype, a traditional
response is to focus on the credibility of the source. This is in fact a standard
means of filtering out information, in the absence of any other means of assessing
its inherent credibility. The difficulty for policy-makers is that the communication
process has been so extensively exploited for political propaganda, military
propaganda, commercial advertising hype, religious dogma, and obfuscation by
"science" (cf regarding global warming or theories of evolution),
that people have become increasingly skilled in questioning its credibility
and forming their own opinions.
New information, especially from the highest authority, does not travel well
through this turbulent semantic environment. Who is credible to whom about what?
Hence the priority given to image management to distract from discreditable
facets of a person, an institution, or its policies. Supposedly the image becomes
the reality -- Potemkin people, institutions and policies! Unfortunately such
image manipulation is increasingly suspect and devalued. People are learning
to read behind the image -- and to infer what may not even be there (in the
light of continuing exposure to revelatory scandals).
Afruther difficulty is that credibility is closely associated with being "known"
-- especially to those receiving the information. Hence the access-fixation
of lobbyists and the aggravation of its associated dysfunctionalities. This
severely reduces the capacity of policy-makers to make use of insights emanating
from (or authenaticated by) other than their immediate circle. This leads to
a pattern of incestuous communication characteristic of many conferences on
the policy circuit.
Reframed: Given the crisis of meaning, and increasing suspicion concerning
any authoritative statement, the question becomes what form of insight can viably
travel through the turbulent semantic environment as a vehicle for coherent
policy-insights? Clearly information as such becomes severely denatured and
transformed.
The transfer of humour, notably via the Internet, illustrates how a pattern
can travel well, even though its elements may be vulnerable to degradation.
The example of humour illustrates how a pattern that can be validated by the
receiver may offer clues to the challenge of credibility. Electronic communication
uses validation techniques at the receiver end to confirm the integrity of pattern
transfer. The learning from this example is that where information is used to
impose a particular pattern of understanding it has less chance of being received
than when it is carried by a pattern that the receiver can verify and apply
according to his/her own insights. In this sense the key to credibility lies
beyond information.
C. Visibility and transparency
Threading through and underlying all the above strategic dependencies are information
and policy issues relating to visibility and transparency:
- Access: fixation on gaining access to the visible in order to render one's
own agenda visible
- Classification: concern that certain information, policies and projects
(eg Echelon) should be covered up or rendered invisible. This includes many
corporate financial operations. For those who are visible, there is a concern
to control access and to avoid giving "recognition" to those who
might gain advantage from becoming more visible.
- Penetration: Concern to penetrate both the visible (because of their perceived
role) and the invisible or non-transparent (in order to determine their strategy);
hence the importance of "covert operations".
- Dissemination: concern to render an institution or program visible, preferably
much more visible than others, and to wider publics.
- Property: concern to acquire control of the images through which a body
or initiative is visibly identified (cf including the efforts to copyright
skylines)
- Surveillance: this may be understood as a process of rendering visible and
transparent, even against the desires of those observed.
- Interpretation: this may be seen as making visible ("discovering")
a previously unknown pattern (of policy initiatives) through collation of
information.
- Disinformation: as with any form of camouflage, this substitutes one form
of visibility for another.
- Credibility: visibility is credibility for many ("negative press is
better than none at all"); credibility is then acquired only through
visibility.
Institutions, and their initiatives, as well as people, agonize over their
visibility because of the manner in which it is used to assess their effectiveness
and consequently their self-esteem (cf the debate on UNESCO's future in September
1999, 30 C/INF.12). Those that are not "visible" simply do not "exist"in
the eyes of many, who feel fully justified in this judgement. Those affected
by judgements that they are relatively invisible may buy into this logic and
feel that their survival is at stake. That the "invisible" may be
visible and valued elsewhere and to others (who may have better information
strategies) is not a concern. This allows "America" to be "discovered"
in 1492 and the "wheel" to be reinvented many times -- as is evident
from the prolifereation of duplicate databases and policy initiatives. That
many vital functions are performed in society by bodies "invisible"
to the majority, or to elites, is only a concern when failure in their performance
renders them visible.
The challenge of visibility is how many bodies and institutions can be simultaneously
visible without leading to some form of saturation or overload -- "visibility
fatigue". Like "market share", more is assumed to be good, and
dominance is best. The consequence of this simplistic strategy in a complex
society is that it thereby reduces the visibility of others (and their concerns),
when collaboration may be essential to viable strategies. It also forces many
bodies to adapt to invisible operation and stealth (as with uncivil society,
terrorist groups, and organized crime). NGOs only moved beyond token visibility
for United Nations agencies after the latter were forced to recognize the inadequacies
of their own programs. But the mindset leads to a "visibility race"
-- notably among NGOs -- analogous to the arms race, encouraged by the public
relations industry and justified by its criteria.
D. Challenge of coherence
D.1: Coherence through the vision metaphor
As the previous section indicates, there is a fundamental reliance on visibility
as a basis for a sense of coherence. Coherence is seemingly provided by visibility.
Exclusive use of the metaphor of vision in this way, is extended through efforts
to articulate a strategic "vision" to give coherence to the details
of any policy initiatives. Use of this metaphor is rarely challenged. The "vision"
metaphor, so characteristic of future strategy making and corporate training
programmes, implicitly excludes insights which might be suggested by other senses.
As argued elsewhere (Futures, April 1993), dependence on this vision
metaphor suggests the need to learn from the limitations of vision in reality.
It is impossible to see round corners. Blindspots are a problem, as well as
widespread defects of vision (short-sightedness, long-sightedness, colour blindness,
night blindness, etc), including total blindness -- which are the subject of
testing and corrective lenses, where possible. All have their strategic equivalents
-- but without any perceived need for opticians. This metaphoric reliance on
single-sense strategy, fails to recognize the strategic strengths associated
with others senses and is insensitive to the strategic vulnerability of the
sight metaphor itself. Vision has little long-distance penetrating power in
these turbulent times -- especially in not being able to see beyond its current
horizon. This reinforces a "flat earth" mentality, inhibiting any
sense of functional roundness.
Animals survive in nature by using a range of senses to maneuver through their
environment under a variety of conditions. Ironically, it is their metaphorical
equivalents that are often used to evaluate politicians and policies: "deaf"
to advice, a person who "listens", the right "touch", his
policies "stink", etc.
The question is whether policy information is not currently trapped within
a vision metaphor, despite such lessons from practical politics. In the confusion
of the present times, for which metaphors such as "darkness", "obscurity" and
"fog" are commonly used, reliance on vision as a basis for coherence is perhaps
a fundamental strategic error. Some strategies may "look good" (as
in a glossy presentation or on a developer's billboard), but do not "sound"
right and often "stink" in practice -- especially to those making
metaphoric use of such senses and who have to experience the subsequent implementation
of the strategies. Simply put, the vision metaphor relies on appearances at
a time when appearances have frequently proven deceptive.
Given the possibility of such error, it is ironic that most policy debate between
factions is based on information presented from particular "viewpoints"
-- through presentation of the "views" of representatives. The challenge
of coherence is then to provide some integrative framework for such views --
often in a "foggy" context in which they are effectively invisible
to each other, or beyond each others horizon. Use of several complementary metaphors
might make such policy integration possible and meaningful -- and give rise
to strategies that "sound" right. It is important to remember that
the vision metaphor is not necessarily the basis for coherence in cultures with
a strong aural tradition, nor amongst the young.
D.2: Information barrier and technocratic escapism
Policy initiatives find themselves, like aerospace vehicles, travelling just
below the sound barrier. Ironically information from them can often only be
communicated in "sound bites". Such initiatives are severely battered
by information that makes them difficult to control and endangers their structural
integrity, fundamental to their coherence. Such information is now highly dynamic
-- the "winds of change" move at ever higher speeds. Gone is the ability
of policies to glide gracefully -- characteristic of lower speeds. Breaking
through, and travelling beyond, the "information barrier" requires
new structures and controls whilst at the same time changing significantly the
relationship to information and its sources. Friction-free policy can then only
be envisaged and achieved by escaping from the conceptual gravity well associated
with particular patterns of information. A technocratic constituency even anticipates
this in its aspiration towards orbital habitats from which the world can be
peacefully governed by benevolent, uncontested control of information. However,
the future challenges of policy-making to be understood by extending the metaphor
to include relativistic effects, remain to be explored -- although these effects
already seem to be evident in a society characterized by major communication
gaps.
D.3: Consensus on global frameworks
Another favoured approach to coherence is to formulate, advocate and campaign
for global frameworks so that agreement is ensured -- and therefore coherence.
This may be seen in the case of ethics, technical standards, language, trading
arrangements, ideology, religion, methodology, etc. Where possible these are
defined with legal-type instruments of which the Holy Grail is some form of
world constitutional government. Unfortunately these initiatives, ignore past
experience and are based on simplistic understandings of the factors that make
for meaningful cross-cultural consensus adequate for sustainable policies in
a complex turbulent society. As such they also obscure the possibility of identifying
and giving form to higher orders of consensus that might be sustained through
configuring otherwise incommensurable insights and perspectives vital to the
pyscho-social diversity of a complex society. The role of information technology
in this respect remains unexplored.
D.4: Building images of coherence
The appearance of coherence may also be created through branding -- namely
careful image building -- burnt into the mind of the perceiver. In the case
of an institution -- whether the UN, IBM or Shell -- this leaves obscure the
relationship between its image and the real coherence of its policies. How do
the images of the many UN agencies form a larger meaningful pattern? To what
extent do such bodies "exist"? Most multinational corporations exist
only as a tangled web of contracts, holding companies, offshore arrangements,
and letterheads, that even the financial press has difficulty disentangling.
As a social reality their existence is a figment of legal and media imagination
-- reminiscent of the tale of the Emperor's new clothes. What coherence is associated
with shorthand statements such as "Washington is opposed to Brussels regarding
hormones in beef"? What is "Brussels" -- or the "international
community", for that matter?
D.5: Coherence through policy commitment and leadership
Coherence may also be created through strong policy commitment and strategic
"leadership" -- as in election manifestos and other (inter)governmental
declarations. Charismatic leadership remains a strong force, whatever the contradictions
of the policies advocated (eg Saddam Hussein, Colonel Khadafi, Fidel Castro).
Unfortunately this approach is proving increasingly meaningless as the collective
memory of a previously deceived population is enhanced by public information.
Policy promises are increasingly made to be broken, if only due to "force
majeure". Commitments are diluted or implementation is rolled back or rendered
toothless. Even commitments to bring delinquent gove | 
