PRISM the colorful Information

I remember the first time I experimented with a prism in my secondary school science class. The grace and wonder of the multitude colors coming out a seemingly innocuous white light is mesmerizing.

The prism is possibly the simplest and most inspiring tool or technology that made humans wonder and discover the entire science of mankind.

The NSA surveillance program PRISM is an example of using “metadata” from noisy, large-volume and dynamic digital contents for “intelligence”. Metadata examination exploits two factors. One is technological, the other legal. The technological one is the development of algorithms that can search through telephone call logs, sms traffic, email flows, internet search and view, social media traffic, chatting patterns or map locations and derive ‘colorful’ patterns of behavior. Rightfully named as PRISM, it shows the colors of the digital metadata. The point is this: the messages themselves are not read, even the telephone numbers are not looked at. Only the patterns of activity as seen in the metadata drive the prism.

All of us, who come to work, leave a high-resolution digital footprint. From the ‘swipe-in’ till ‘swipe-out’ almost everything the white-collar worker does creates a digital record. For example, in a large office complex, the swipe data is enough to make a very intricate inference about working, leisure, eating, interfaces, team-work, climate-impact, and many others. It is possible to recreate the architecture of the complex from swipe data alone. If we complement with employee LDAP, a very unique interpretation of team dynamics can be gauged. Automate car tags and employee’s mode-of-transport, optimal parking management is a small fringe product. Compound it with the PC usage, file-stamps, emails, shared-drive consumption and internet access, an intricate footprint can be created.

The entire productive work is done with some kind or other of digital imprint. These carry time, location, uid, object, and resource measures. SAP transactions, application license logs, file-system usage under each uid and the swipe-card based location access details are nearly complete representation of everyone’s work done at the office complex!

PRISM is a beautiful back-office technology that can differentiate the red from violet and present an intricate detail of the thousands of personnel who work in an office complex. By creating a contextual business information framework model to obtain few levels of business and asset related metadata, the system can completely provide all necessary details.

People Management, Organization modeling or Process Architectures are far from being science. Their methods and implementations are far-cry from the 21^st century technology. They are quite unstructured, semantically weak and highly subjective to exploit the information revolution. Consequently, it is nearly impossible to determine their efficacy or predict their outcomes in any verifiable manner.

IT footprint record with careful metadata creation and analysis will do everything and much beyond the so called conventional process remodeling! This exploit is vital for all kinds of systems including organizations, businesses and management in this decade. It is restricted mainly due to various organizations’ mindsets and culture which are resident in 20^th century! Most managers cannot visualize the potential or identify the environment needed to cultivate the VIBGYOR! Often we are content with the black and white or unaware of color!

PRISM is low-cost, guaranteed to perform, non-intrusive and can show you lots of color.

Image & Reference to PRISM news:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/12/heres-everything-we-know-about-prism-to-date/

Accountability of the Highly Rated

Italian scientists jailed for six years after failing to issue warnings ahead of deadly L’Aquila earthquake

This is an important development that addresses accountability of the highly rated professionals. As human beings are developing more complex systems and interfaces, the clear process à Response relationships are getting difficult to demonstrate. It could be betting of high-profile individuals in IPL, assessed loss in coal-blocks, extent of land damage in illegal mining, ground-water contamination in a state, downgrade of reserves in a field or decline of production in a plant.

All these and many more have serious impact on the lives of millions of people – often irreversibly. Very routine things like the shampoo, hair dye or the off-shelf pain killer tablet all carry unknown accountability and responsibility of the makers. Examples from proliferation of DDT or Plastics are clearly visible as global problem to see.  Often, the people and organizations that create, publicize, make-you-trust, sell and become “standards” in our lives are driven by highly rated.

A specialist doctor who needs a 30day forward booking, elite scientist who graces all big events, attractive star who advices health and fairness,  big bull CEO who claims new BT food, and the high-profile bureaucrat who announces national water policy – all of them are HIGHLY PAID and VENERATED. They carry expensive price-tags often making millions in their career doing such high-value things. When these go wrong, they also expose millions of people, life and environment to serious sufferings.

There is seldom any accountability to such high-profile “postures” in modern society. It gets very difficult to pin the responsibility to any specific people, and much more difficult to prove it in court and get punishment. This is due to – the millions of ‘escape paths’ such functions have. They can state, that the data was wrong, the computer program was only 32bit precision (while it needs 128bits), the implementation didn’t see the ‘cautions’ raised in report, uncertainty with science and hundred other things. It is so easy to escape from any wrong happening, whereas, invariably all of them accrue wealth from all good outcomes.

In view of the extensive impact that the failures cause, there is reason why the high-profile people and companies are accountable. After all, they benefit from the successes, therefore, they have right to be given responsibility for the failures! In this 21^st century, the ability or need to work on “Trust” is unnecessary. Science being practiced as a “TRUSTFUL” activity is creating unalterable damage.  Science needs to be verifiable and auditable. The problem is global, national, social, within companies, and within individual teams.

There is an irrevocable need to bring accountability in complex processes at all levels.

This is possible by implementing proper databases, workflow systems, analytics and publication of information. Business Information Framework is the information solution that brings “ACCOUNTABILITY”.

All the great men and women, please note, you can, should and in 21^st century will be made accountable.