Television and Work-What I'm Doing Pt. 1

I sometimes have the TV on while I'm working in my hooch. It is a brilliantly eclectic combination of channels. There are stations from India, Afghanistan, Britain, and more. It also carries the Armed Forces Network which for the civilians out there, is a channel that is shown around the world. No commercials, outside of advertising for re-enlisting, and a slew of public service announcements presenting the responsibilities of a variety of agencies within the military, and campaigns against smoking, theft, and security. The programming is a conglomeration of sports, talk shows from both Fox and CNN, some movies, sitcoms, etc.

Today as I was writing, I flipped through the stations, and stopped on a show from the UK on the "Hollywood Channel" where two Brits were checking out houses in East Tennessee! It was nice to see a glimpse of home. Of course the Brits were impressed:) They were concerned about the wooden houses and pleased that there were fireplaces since "the power can go out often during storms in the winter."

Several people have written to ask exactly what I'm doing. Let me tell you about 1/2 of my responsibilities that kick in when I'm out in the provinces. I go out with 1-2 other colleagues, at least one of whom is a lieutenant colonel to ensure that we gain some credibility with the military. Once there, the leadership of the province comes for about 15-25 hours of facilitated sessions (depending on if it is a new effort or an update). The leadership can include Department of State, US Agency for International Development, and US Department of Agriculture representatives, as well as members from the Police Mentoring Teams, the military staff of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, Maneuver Units, and other military task forces in the area of operations.

Those discussions begin with a situational analysis to gain understanding of the province, and are followed by an attempt to link all of the issues that surface and trying to connect the issues to one another. Once that is done, discussions are held to establish a 1 and 3 year goal and then to determine how that goal can be met through levels of effort in a variety of sectors: governance, basic services, rule of law, security, economic opportunity and human capital, infrastructure, inclusive dialogue and reconciliation. Then a management tool is applied as the activities/projects necessary to ensure that the efforts are successful are identified as well as supporting partners and counterparts in the Government of Afghanistan and then placed against a timeline. Next, themes are identified that synchronize multiple levels of effort with transformative effects. A talk about what metrics are being used to monitor progress follows. Critical districts are identified where increased focus would yield higher results than anticipated and throughout the process, national level decision points, requests for information, and recommendations are captured.

The purpose of all of this is that it pushes all of the actors to step-back and communicate by cross-walking understandings, ideas, and activities with one another. The pace of operations is rapid at that level, and previously, few provinces took time to look beyond the next week. This allows them to set goals and a direction. These facilitated sessions allow a horizontal integration to occur, and as the provinces establish these plans, they can have their concerns and interests represented up the chain to the brigade and national levels. It also serves the purpose of having civilians promote their agenda in a space where the military will acknowledge the value of their perspective.

I don't know if any of that made any sense, but I've been explaining in bits and pieces, so I wanted to try to be a bit more thorough. Feel free to ask questions.

Peace...