#atxcouncil: Flannigan's proposal would beget bureaucratic turf wars/"information siloing"

"Every prudent man acts with knowledge,
But a fool lays open his folly."

Proverbs 13:16

Since Jimmy Flannigan made his "Defund APD" proposal the other day, there's been a lot of ink spilled over his call to physically demolish APD headquarters.  That's fine.  It's certainly newsworthy.
In fairness to Jimmy Flannigan, this website has been calling for moving governmental offices out of the downtown area for at least five years.  Technically, this could fit under that rubric.  If this proposal were being made by someone trustworthy, it **MIGHT** be worth considering.

Unfortunately, this proposal is being made by Jimmy Flannigan.

But there's a lot more to Flannigan's proposal than the physical location of APD's offices.

Specifically, Flannigan wants to split the current police departments in five component parts:

*** Department of Emergency Communications & Technology 
- Civilian Director of Emergency Communications 
- Budget of approx. $65mil (incl. support & transfers)
- Responsible for 9-1-1/CTECC, regional intelligence, records management, forensics, and emergency-specific technology

*** Department of Patrol
- Sworn Director of Patrol designated by the city manager and approved by the city council (according to state law). This department head could be designated as one of the 5 commanders that make up a geographically broad “Commander’s Council” to help democratize patrol leadership, ensure more diverse voices are making state-law-required decisions, and ensure a ready list of alternative department heads if necessary.
- Budget of approx. $197mil (incl. support & transfers)
- Responsible for DTAC & 4 Regions of patrol, tactical, and district reps 

*** Department of Investigations 
- Sworn Director of Investigations designated by the city manager and approved by the city council (according to state law).  
- Budget of approx. $95mil (incl. support & transfers)
- Responsible for detectives, investigations, and organized crime units

*** Department of Traffic Safety 
- Sworn Director of Traffic Safety designated by the city manager and approved by the city council (according to state law).  
- Budget of approx. $25mil (incl. support & transfers)
- Works in partnership with the Austin Transportation Department and should have mobility-focused civilian executive management in the Manager’s office

*** Department of Professional Standards
- Sworn Director of Professional Standards designated by the city manager and approved by the city council (according to state law).
- Budget of approx. $25mil (incl. support & transfers)
- Covers Internal Affairs, Recruiting, and Training. Future cadet class decisions would impact this part of the budget and would help separate those dollars from being reallocated without Council authority.

It doesn't take a genius to see how this unfolds: The new departments spend more time fighting each other than fighting crime. Political Fiefdoms develop. The five department heads game the new system so that nothing is ever 'their' fault. Accountability disappears.

On the bright side, creating five new municipal departments could create five new cottage industries for lobbyists.

So there's that.

Here's what's really crazy:

An information silo is an information management system that is unable to freely communicate with other information management systems. Communication within an information silo is always vertical, making it difficult or impossible for the system to work with unrelated systems.

In the event, God forbid, that Flannigan's proposal were to become reality...information siloing is pretty much guaranteed.

Nature of the beast.

That's before you account for the fact that this has to go through the rest of council.

Yikes.

Bottom Line: This is all completely predictable.