I've been hearing talk about long range plans and agendas since the early '60s when I worked for NASA. We in fact had five year money for a great deal of what we did and it actually help cut costs. Those were the days they were ahead of schedule and under cost.

In the old days mention a "five year plan"and people would say that's a Soviet idea and it will not work. That mantra has become the DNA of how we plan. The reason the Soviet's had problems it was top down planning. As long as we do top down - command and control planning we are stuck in this unending cycle that short changes everyone. Maybe we should network from the bottom up.

In my over 47 years of federal service I was involved in a number of projects similar to this but on a less grandious scale. The problem is in all but one case, they were top down and failed to achieve their goals. The lack of understanding of the tactical part of government, by this I mean what is the effect on field delivery. The one exception was Al Gore's reinventing government that encouraged field involvement and you can see it's positive effect is still alive here in the boondocks.