Just to refresh your memories and put this in perspective, I’ve been a gummint employee since I was 19 when I enlisted in the Navy. I served on active duty for about 11½ years, and come December, I’ll have been a civilian employee of the Navy for 22 years. And this past week, I was a part of something unlike anything I’d experienced in all those years.
A month or so ago, I found out I would be participating in a tabletop exercise, which is mostly a brainstorming session on potential scenarios to which a government response would likely be required. I suppose the most familiar forms would be war gaming or disaster drills, all with the aim of working out likely problems before the actual situation occurs. The scenarios we played were more in the political/economic/humanitarian aid vein.
I didn’t realize till the 4th day that what we were doing had never been done before. The organizers of the exercise brought together representatives of 7 government departments (Defense having the most members present) as well as contractors, intelligence types, and even some industry representatives. We were divided into 2 teams, with one whose regular jobs dealt generally with physical world issues and the other who worked usually in political and economic realms. Each team had a facilitator assigned – the official cat-herders – and both teams looked at the identical scenarios. There was also a “White Cell” who we could question as we needed. Sometimes they gave us specific answers (for example, regarding timelines) and sometimes they just said “Assume what you wish.”
Now, we all have heard, and many have made, comments about government employees. By and large, these comments are cynical, nasty, and based upon isolated incidents which grow into legendary status. I’m here to tell you that for four very long work days, several dozen government employees worked together, sharing knowledge, experiences, expertise, and dedication while solving several problems that are more likely to occur than not.
I can’t disclose specifics, but I can tell you that we were to prioritize what we believed would happen in each case, including worst case, and provide courses of action with Diplomatic, Economic, Military, and Legal options. Believe it or not, despite having the largest contingent from the Dept of Defense, including 6 or 7 in uniform, the Military options were always peripheral – in fact, they were hard-pressed to find realistic ways to include themselves. Still, they were throwing ideas and suggestions on the table along with everyone else.
I can only speak to my group, but the breadth of experience present at the table was impressive. No one monopolized, everyone shared, everyone listened. Our facilitator kept us from going off on tangents. Our volunteer scribe was amazing – she captured the essence of all discussions (her notes were projected on a screen in front, so we could see everything she typed), even if people were speaking over each other. If one person made a suggestion that wasn’t practical, another would explain why in a reasonable, non-condescending manner. There was discussion, there was conversation, there was even some laughter. And I was there feeling honored to be part of such a group.
I can share an edited version of one really funny moment. We were discussing the legal response to one part of a situation. Someone in the group suggest a lawsuit against the main “bad guy” (let’s call him President Unnice) and the scribe captured it as “Sue Unnice.” One of the members of the group read that out loud and said “Sue Unnice? That’s President Unnice’s sister!” OK, maybe you had to be there, but we all lost it over that one.
After lunch on day 4, both groups came together to share their solutions. It was interesting to see where we matched and where we differed. I found it especially enlightening that for the second scenario, they were far more gloom-and-doom than we were. But overall, the general consensus was very similar. The results were to be presented to some high-level folks on Friday morning, but I had already planned to leave, so I missed that part.
The bottom line is, at least on my level, government employees are serious, dedicated, intelligent, insightful, and mostly optimistic. I was proud beyond words to be part of this exercise. I am hopeful that this effort will be repeated for other situations by other organizations. It was obvious that no one group had all the answers, but combining many groups broadened the knowledge and experience base, greatly increasing the chance of coming up with a good answer to a potentially bad situation. There’s a real lesson in this. I sure hope it’ll be learned.
So, American Taxpayers, I promise you that you got more than your money’s worth last week. You had two teams and between 40-50 people total combining their brainpower to suggest a slate of actions to be applied should one or more of the very likely scenarios we studied come to pass. And none of the actions involved dropping bombs. Plus we looked at several humanitarian aid situations that fell within our scenarios – that’s where the military played the biggest part – handling the logistics of getting aid where it would be needed.
Yep, we done good. So I can truly say I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
Glad to hear you got your spreadsheet program fixed.
I could do without the land line, but I was in withdrawal from the lack of DSL.
I’m a bit nervous because this was all conducted through eBay, and I’m very cautious about buying new electronics off of eBay because of the potential for fraud, but I did some fairly deep checking on 
And now we have TS Noel brewing down south. BTW that’s Noel pronouced N-O-L, not the xmas viariety of N-O-E-L. What’s up with that?