Congratulations! You’ve convinced your editor that the nuclear talks between Iran and the United States have a tie to your community – either because you have a nuclear reactor nearby or a military base or a number of Iranian readers.
The only problem? You have to do it from your desk.
So, what do you do?
Here are some tools for capturing the context behind this hot-button issue. This guide isn’t intended to be exhaustive, but it should give you enough fuel to hit the ground running in your Iran coverage.
UNDERSTANDING THE GOVERNMENT:
Constitution of Iran via the Islamic Public of Iran Mission to the UN in New York
WASHINGTON — Veteran education is a perennially urgent issue for members of the United States military.
In order to raise awareness about barriers to veteran education and initiatives being undertaken to improve it, National Louis University and Student Veterans of America joined forces to host March 26’s “Improving Veteran Education Symposium” at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington.
There, the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative spoke with two expert panelists (who also happen to be veterans themselves) to get the inside scoop on how the media can do a better job of covering veteran education.
Advice from Megan Everett, Northwestern University alum, Program Officer of the Veterans Program at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation and United States Navy veteran:
Put higher education institutions who are dropping the ball when it comes to serving veterans on blast in order to pressure them to step their games up.
Indicators to watch:
Does the school have staff members explicitly dedicated to serving veterans?
“We have certifying officials that work to certify the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill and do some financial aid work, but there’s no person who has ‘veteran’ in their title,” Everett said of Northwestern University, where she is currently working to improve the state of veterans’ resources on campus.
Do veterans have dedicated physical spaces on campus?
Does the school have a functional veteran service group?
Other data points and factors to keep an eye on
Veteran student recruiting
Veteran student retention
Utilization of veteran student skill sets
Advice from David Goldich, Senior Consultant at Gallup and United States Marine Corps veteran:
Don’t assume that very veteran’s experience is identical or make instant extrapolations about the entire military community based on a single person’s story.
“Realize that it’s not a monolith; it’s a mosaic, when you’re talking about veterans or the military,” he explained during the post-panel Q&A. He advised reporters to recognize how differences in areas such as military branch, employment status, gender, levels of physical ability and more impact individual experience.
“Connect the dots” and move from merely looking at veteran graduation rates to an analysis of “what works for who [sic] and why.”
“No one’s talking to each other,” he explained. “Everyone’s measuring their little own slice of the block—pie. They’ve got blinders.”
Questions to ask:
Does education lead to an improved quality of life
Does education lead to better employment?
What identifiable indicators led people to pursue higher education after their military service?
Find “thematic connections” between different stages of a veteran student’s life to better understand the stories behind different veteran outcomes.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, doesn’t want America to fear the future.
Terrorism, cyberattacks, epidemics and tumult in the Mideast and Africa threaten U.S. security, he says, and the Defense Department needs to be ready. To him that means reforms are needed in acquisition of goods and services, personnel and organization. Especially important is buying technology to keep pace with the changing environment.
“Nobody can foresee what’s going to happen over the next 16 months,” he said recently. “What we do know is the velocity of change is accelerating and that the unexpected will spring out on us. The question is how well do we, or how well can we, respond.”
“Today you see countries like Russia and China trying to outflank us using technology, whether it’s deploying carrier-killing missiles or building radar that can detect stealth.”.
Thornberry, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. edge in technology is decreasing, citing “the general pace of change” and “our broken budget process and acquisition process” as factors contributing to what he calls “an eroding American technological superiority.”
“The only defense is to adapt quicker than they do,” he said. “I don’t want to see America outflanked.”
Thornberry has proposed acquisition reform legislation, co-sponsoring with Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., a bill called the Agile Acquisition to Retain Technological Edge Act, H.R. 1597.
According to a House Armed Services Committee press release, the bill’s introduction was timed so that the public’s feedback could be obtained before the legislative ball starts rolling on the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act. This way, Thornberry explained at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on March 23, the bill could function as “a discussion draft for the first tranche of legislative proposals to fix our acquisitions system.” During his CSIS talk, Thornberry noted that the full committee markup of the newest iteration of the NDAA is slated to begin on April 29.
Here is an introductory guide to this legislation.
Full Text of H.R. 1597:
(Source: House Armed Services Committee)
Draft Report on H.R. 1597:
(Source: House Armed Services Committee)
A Quick Outline of What Reforms Thornberry Has Proposed
(Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies talk on March 23, 2015)
People
Take away some barriers that make it hard for “top military talent” to have a role in acquisition process
Make Defense Acquisition Workforce Development Fund permanent
Enact mandatory commercial-market training to close industry-government gap
Enact mandatory ethics training for industry-government interactions
Acquisitions Strategy
Every program needs to start with a written and “upfront” acquisitions strategy that is updated
Consolidates multiple reporting requirements
Choose types of contracts used on an acquisition-by-acquisition basis
Evaluate whether a multi-year plan is suitable on an acquisition-by-acquisition basis
Include risk mitigation strategies for acquisition plan
Consider incentives
Possibility of allowing shared savings on service contracts mentioned
Chain of Command
Simplify chain of command for acquisitions decisions
Move from legal certification to a decision and decrease number of lawyers involved in process
Raise dollar thresholds on authorities to enable ease of getting things done
Keep testing/research community in R&D and out of decision-making
Regulations & Paperwork
Pare down reporting requirements
Keep a single decision-maker accountable within the acquisitions process
Watch Thornberry’s full CSIS address here:
Expert Feedback
CSIS Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group Director Andrew Hunter praised Thornberry for capturing “both sides of the coin,” in the sense that the plan married good intentions with an awareness of the facts that other potentially positive plans of action are out there and a “silver-bullet quick fix to the system” doesn’t exist. He said Thornberry’s “areas of focus and the way he’s thinking about the problem” were very optimistic, despite the fact that the language of the legislation was pending at the time of the interview.
Hunter said he interpreted Thornberry’s chain-of-command simplification goal to mean that every person in the acquisitions process would not have veto power versus experts being nixed from the process.
“At the end of the day, what you want is you want experts who come to you and say ‘no kidding, this is how we see it; this is, this is our vision of ground truth,’” he said, going on to explain that there needs to be an individual separate from the experts to distill various experts’ input and perspectives into a final, authoritative decision.
Hunter said he thinks Thornberry is on the right track, but that “acquisition workforce is critical” and that he wants program managers “to have good judgment” and a basic comprehension of the acquisitions-sector discipline. He also said he’d like to see defense acquisition reforms mirror changes occurring in technology and industry.
“The world of today and the world certainly of tomorrow is not the world of the 50s and 60s, and, so, we definitely want to make sure that we are adapting and adaptable to those changes,” Hunter said.
5 Questions Reporters Could Ask About the Bill:
What is the timeline for the rollout of the reform if the bill is ratified?
During his CSIS address, Thornberry discussed the minimization of pre-acquisition “paperwork” in order to streamline the defense acquisitions process.
What types of documents, in particular, are set to be minimized?
Will there an alternative source or process by which journalists covering acquisitions could theoretically obtain that quantitative and/or qualitative data if the research is being done but reports are not issued for the sake of reducing this bulk?
In the same CSIS address, Thornberry said that the decrease in pre-acquisition reporting was intended to reduce “second-guessing” on the part of program managers within the acquisitions process.
How do Thornberry and Smith define the line between responsible research and second-guessing?
What is a real-world example of a line of research that would be nixed vs. one that would be preserved for the sake of checks and balances remaining in the process?
Will there be any shift in the hiring process for program managers within the acquisitions process in response to the increased level of responsibility and authority that the proposed legislation would afford them?
How would the streamlined chain of command proposed by the legislation impact employment rates in the defense sector?
For decades, authorities have relied on various state and federal laws to investigate reporters and their sources, to issue them subpoenas and to use the threat of prosecution and incarceration to get them to cooperate.
In response, journalists and their lawyers have fought back by claiming “reporter’s privilege,” with varying degrees of success.
These issues have come to a head over the past decade as the Bush and Obama administrations have used unprecedented aggressiveness in going after reporters and their sources.
The newest How-To briefing from the Medill National Security Initiative’s Josh Meyer also provides journalists with information about what to steps to take to protect themselves from being subpoenaed, and what to do if they are subpoenaed, or come under investigation and possible prosecution.
We’ve put together a few documents from key national security focused agencies with their plans for the government shutdown that began today (see bottom), and a few links to various sites with other information. The Washington Post is doing a particularly solid job in assessing and communicating the impact.
Below is an example of the agency information in the Posts’s handy “Impacts of a government shutdown” interactive list.
Commissaries, which provide deeply discounted groceries to active and retired military members, will close starting Oct. 2. Find locations in your area, state and region.
For decades, authorities have relied on various state and federal laws to investigate reporters and their sources, to issue them subpoenas and to use the threat of prosecution and incarceration to get them to cooperate.
