Fixing the national security state: commissions and the politics of disaster and reform

In the U.S. federal system, “crisis commissions” are powerful instruments of social learning that actively mediate the politics of disaster and reform. Typically endowed with the legal authority to establish causes of dramatic policy failures and make recommendations to prevent their recurrence, commissions can prompt major governmental reorganizations. Yet commissions are also frequently accused of being influenced by dominant interests and faulted for articulating incomplete or politically expedient narratives of failure. Even when commission conclusions are accepted, the reforms they propose are not always adopted. Using the 9/11 Commission as a conceptual backdrop, this dissertation explores the relationship between disaster, public investigation, and reform by undertaking a detailed study of the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board and Iraq Study Group. Together, the cases constitute a study of the national security state seeking to correct failures across different domains of state power: border security, war-making capability, and dominance in space. I argue that commissions, as one-shot diagnostic and therapeutic instruments, are more effective than standing political institutions at confronting entrenched ways of seeing and knowing in complex systems of the national security state, which are defined by the interaction of ideology, large bureaucracies, and advanced technologies. The ability of commissions to see critically for society itself is not given but rather constructed through investigative and deliberative processes that must overcome the action of political interests. Commission credibility is therefore not an essential trait that derives a priori from the inherent stature of its members, but is rather the output of the investigative phase as commissions identify, compile, and publicize errors made by the state. In this adversarial process, an aggressive professional staff emerges as a determinant of commission success, leading to an important distinction between investigative commissions with “super staffs” and advisory commissions that lack them. Process tracing recommendations over a multi-year period nevertheless reveals dynamics of agency and resistance at play between commissions and the institutions they attempt to reform, highlighting the partial success commissions are likely to achieve at coercing entrenched institutions to implement their recommendations.This work was sponsored by the Gates Cambridge Trus

The Private Military Industrial Complex - Extending Conflict Duration and Quality: The Cost of Using Private Military Contractors

The American military and Executive Branch have transitioned the way that the US engages in war strategy to rely more and more on private military contractors. This paper sought to examine the consequences that this dependence will cause. It was found that two main issues arise with the use of private military contractors and private security contractors. First their use lessons the political accountability that is necessary in preventing or ending war through the reduction of audience costs. Second the indiscriminate brutality that private security contractors are infamous for leads to the radicalization of the population and the potential for violent mobilization against the offender. Those issues compound to one conclusion: the use of private military contractors will lead to an increase in the number of conflicts entered into and the duration of those conflicts

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

Information Outlook, April/May 2009

Volume 13, Issue 3https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2009/1002/thumbnail.jp

Iraq: Oil and Gas Legislation, Revenue Sharing, and U.S. Policy

This report reviews policy proposals and interim contracts, analyzes the positions of various Iraqi political actors, and discusses potential implications for U.S. foreign policy goals in Iraq

An Operational Utility Assessment: Measuring the Effectiveness of the Joint Concept Technology Demonstration (JCTD), Joint Forces Protection Advance Security System (JFPASS)

Sponsored Report (for Acquisition Research Program)Planning modern military operations requires an accurate intelligence assessment of potential threats, combined with a detailed assessment of the physical theater of operations. This information can then be combined with equipment and manpower resources to set up a logistically supportable operation that mitigates as much of the enemy threat as possible. Given such a daunting challenge, military planners often turn to intelligent software agents to support their efforts. The success of the mission often hinges on the accuracy of these plans and the integrity of the security umbrella provided. The purpose of this project is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the Joint Forces Protection Advanced Security System (JFPASS) Joint Concept Technology Demonstration (JCTD) to better meet force-protection needs. It will also address the adaptability of this technology to an ever-changing enemy threat by the use of intelligent software. This project will collect and analyze data pertaining to the research, development, testing, and effectiveness of the JFPASS and develop an operational effectiveness model to quantify overall system performance.Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research ProgramApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Users, Queries, and Bad Abandonment in Web Search

After a user submits a query and receives a list of search results, the user may abandon their query without clicking on any of the search results. A bad query abandonment is when a searcher abandons the SERP because they were dissatisfied with the quality of the search results, often making the user reformulate their query in the hope of receiving better search results. As we move closer to understanding when and what causes a user to abandon their query under different qualities of search results, we move forward in an overall understanding of user behavior with search engines. In this thesis, we describe three user studies to investigate bad query abandonment. First, we report on a study to investigate the rate and time at which users abandon their queries at different levels of search quality. We had users search for answers to questions, but showed users manipulated SERPs that contain one relevant document placed at different ranks. We show that as the quality of search results decreases, the probability of abandonment increases, and that users quickly decide to abandon their queries. Users make their decisions fast, but not all users are the same. We show that there appear to be two types of users that behave differently, with one group more likely to abandon their query and are quicker in finding answers than the group less likely to abandon their query. Second, we describe an eye-tracking experiment that focuses on understanding possible causes of users' willingness to examine SERPs and what motivates users to continue or discontinue their examination. Using eye-tracking data, we found that a user deciding to abandon a query is best understood by the user's examination pattern not including a relevant search result. If a user sees a relevant result, they are very likely to click it. However, users' examination of results are different and may be influenced by other factors. The key factors we found are the rank of search results, the user type, and the query quality. For example, we show that regardless of where the relevant document is placed in the SERP, the type of query submitted affects examination, and if a user enters an ambiguous query, they are likely to examine fewer results. Third, we show how the nature of non-relevant material affects users' willingness to further explore a ranked list of search results. We constructed and showed participants manipulated SERPs with different types of non-relevant documents. We found that user examination of search results and time to query abandonment is influenced by the coherence and type of non-relevant documents included in the SERP. For SERPs coherent on off-topic results, users spend the least amount of time before abandoning and are less likely to request to view more results. The time they spend increases as the SERP quality improves, and users are more likely to request to view more results when the SERP contains diversified non-relevant results on multiple subtopics

Evaluating Information Retrieval and Access Tasks

This open access book summarizes the first two decades of the NII Testbeds and Community for Information access Research (NTCIR). NTCIR is a series of evaluation forums run by a global team of researchers and hosted by the National Institute of Informatics (NII), Japan. The book is unique in that it discusses not just what was done at NTCIR, but also how it was done and the impact it has achieved. For example, in some chapters the reader sees the early seeds of what eventually grew to be the search engines that provide access to content on the World Wide Web, today’s smartphones that can tailor what they show to the needs of their owners, and the smart speakers that enrich our lives at home and on the move. We also get glimpses into how new search engines can be built for mathematical formulae, or for the digital record of a lived human life. Key to the success of the NTCIR endeavor was early recognition that information access research is an empirical discipline and that evaluation therefore lay at the core of the enterprise. Evaluation is thus at the heart of each chapter in this book. They show, for example, how the recognition that some documents are more important than others has shaped thinking about evaluation design. The thirty-three contributors to this volume speak for the many hundreds of researchers from dozens of countries around the world who together shaped NTCIR as organizers and participants. This book is suitable for researchers, practitioners, and students—anyone who wants to learn about past and present evaluation efforts in information retrieval, information access, and natural language processing, as well as those who want to participate in an evaluation task or even to design and organize one