2. Introduction
• Even in the good times, governing is hard and
complicated – often, success is difficult to achieve
even in the best of circumstances.
• In times of crisis, the challenges become
exponentially more difficult.
• The United States is facing its most dire and
complex set of challenges since WW2 & The Great
Depression.
• Extraordinary times require extraordinary solutions.
Copyright 2009, Semantech Inc. 2
3. Policy Integration - Defined
“The ability to define, reconcile and
manage policy interactions and
relationships.
This approach ensures that unified goals
aren't jeopardized by actions delegated to
policy ‘Stovepipes.’ Policy Integration
dramatically reduces the risk of unintended
consequences arising from potentially
conflicting objectives.”
Copyright 2009, Semantech Inc. 3
4. Government 3.0
• Was anyone sure what Government 2.0 was?
• The next generation of governance is more than
automation, more than interactive collaboration – it
is a reevaluation of process & practice infused with
technology & innovation.
• Government 3.0 is both the platform and
mechanism for change – it is the facilitating
medium through which policy is both defined and
executed. It is more than technology, it is
enlightened, transparent governance…
Copyright 2009, Semantech Inc. 4
5. Who is Semantech Inc.
• Semantech Inc. is a small, woman-owned business
founded in 2006. The company is located near Dayton,
Ohio. Since our inception we have supported clients in a
variety of industries nationwide.
• Our charter is to provide enterprise-level solutions and to
develop innovative approaches to better solve IT’s most
troubling problems.
• Our underlying premise is founded upon the realization
that traditional IT is largely an exercise in chaotic
semantics. The unification of process, logic and data is
Semantic Integration or Semantic IT.
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6. Innovation is our Business…
Innovation is more than thinking outside of the box, it’s about building
the world that holds the box…
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7. The Challenge of Governing
• Governance is a collection of programs, projects
and information – it is an exercise in management.
• Small projects are sometimes just as difficult to run
as large programs, managing 100’s or 1000’s of
projects of all sizes is the real challenge.
• Not only must we run all of these projects well, we
must coordinate them all to produce desired effects
at a national level – that is more than challenging,
thusfar it has seldom been achieved with a high
degree or rate of success.
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9. Lack of Accountability
• Never has the issue of government accountability
been more important or more visible than it is right
now.
• Despite many attempts to improve accountability or
traceability, the government still suffers from a
serious credibility gap due to past failures.
• The chances for program, project and ultimately
policy success are often directly dependent upon
maintaining the goodwill of the American people.
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11. What is Policy ?
• Policy is the foundation for action – it is both the
vision and the plan.
• Policy occurs in increments, as part of larger
initiatives or grouped across many policy elements
or details.
• Policy is the manifestation of public political will to
action – as such it is central to the nature of our
Democracy.
• Policy is first and foremost, information and as
such can be better organized.
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13. The Intersection of Policy & Technology
• The United States government owns thousands of
information systems. It stores or manages billions
of documents. Within those systems or documents
exist trillions of discrete pieces of information.
• Democracy is described by many as access to
information and the opportunity to exchange ideas.
In the IT world, that sounds a lot like databases &
collaboration, but of course, it’s more…
• Technology is not merely an ancillary part of the
governance process, it is becoming the process.
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15. Policy Architecture
• Policy is the ultimate conceptual architecture.
• Enterprise Architecture is in reality merely a
reflection of the policy elements that are eventually
manifested into programs and projects.
• Policy Architecture applies the techniques and
tools of enterprise architecture to better organize
policy management at a Cross-Domain level. This
has been the key element that has been missing in
ALL previous federal EA efforts.
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16. The Initiative Set
• A single policy may comprise many policy
elements, so too may an initiative encompass
many policies.
• The Initiative Set recognizes the highest level of
policy coordination. The initiative set represents
multiple initiatives that are chartered to achieve the
same or largely similar results.
• If these pieces are broken apart and managed
separately from one another we end up with a
fractured group of “policy stovepipes.”
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17. Policy Reconciliation
• If we had the luxury of only concerning ourselves
with one policy or one program at a time,
governance wouldn’t be quite so hard…
• Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury.
• Policy reconciliation refers to the inevitable
coordination that must occur both within and
between policies in order to achieve the desired
effects both individually and synergistically.
• If it was easy, it would have been done before…
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19. The Policy Integration Practice
• Policy Integration as a discipline is a recognition
that policy can and ought to be managed with
today’s technology in a new and more effective
manner.
• The Semantech Policy Integration Practice is
designed to address this through a revolutionary
methodology and an evolutionary set of Semantic
technologies.
• Policy Integration can be applied to achieve a new
plateau of results – it is specifically constructed to
take synergy into consideration.
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20. Policy Solutions
• Viewing Policy Management and Integration as an
Information Technology solution is a new and
perhaps novel way of addressing this problem
space.
• Policy solutions are specific tasks, processes,
techniques and deliverables designed to achieve
various policy management and integration
objectives.
• The Semantech Policy Integration practice is
focused entirely on simplification of those
challenges through “enlightened automation.”
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22. The Value Proposition
• The stakes are as high or higher than anything that
could be imagined – policy outcomes will
determine the disposition of Trillions of dollars
worth of investments.
• More importantly, policy outcomes will either better
or worsen the lives of most Americans.
• The business case for Policy Integration is as
simple as asking oneself, ‘can this be done better’
– if the answer is yes, then why aren’t we doing it?
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23. Conclusion
• There is a great challenge before us now and there
is a call to action – everyone needs to explore
ways to do things better.
• We believe that innovation can start at the
beginning and at the top, we believe that anyone
can contribute to that process.
• Policy Integration is a discipline whose time has
truly come. We can exploit this practice to solve
today’s problems – right now…
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24. Contact Information
Thank You…
For more information, contact:
Stephen Lahanas
slahanas@semantech-inc.com
(937) 554-4673
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