We have been receiving a new barrage of angry emails about EcoSnoop. Many of them imagining we are a force of evil launched by Al Gore or George Soros. You should know, we are not on their speed dial.
Lets agree that the name EcoSnoop is a bad name. We should have worked harder to get a good name. If any of you have looked into domain names recently, its hard to get what you want. EcoSnoop was originally an internal temporary name while we did development.
Lets also agree the big government and waste are a great threat to our way of life. Implementing expensive environmental programs to solve the risks in the energy market, and then having those programs fail, disrupts our economy. It does no good in resolving the concerns people have about CO2 or energy security.
The experience of our team is that eliminating waste in manufacturing, business, etc improves the economics of the market. If government buildings are left on all night long, with no one in them, we waste money and energy. So rather than fight if "Energy Security" or "Global Warming" is worse, why not just turn off the lights.
Generally when we see waste in the public space, if we care to do something about it, its hard to find out who to tell. We might mention it to the person at the reception counter. But, that is about it. Conversely, if you are a large corporation or bureaucracy it is difficult to see the implications of a lot of little issues. You know the issues exist, but don't have a systematic way to resolve them. Often those little issues, as evidenced by the success of program like six sigma, add up to big issues.
Before you say "What right do you have presupposing what a corporation wants", we agree that it is wrong to use social system to intimidate private entities. We though have no problem with putting pressure on government since they do work for us. Our position on private industry is that if they wish, as some do, they can use this platform to understand opportunities to improve. Its their decision.
We are thinking through how to change the EcoSnoop platform to allow resolution of waste, of any sort, in the public sector. And to alllow private entitites to use the platform to invite the public to help them reduce waste. Our new approach intends to use:
- Mobile platforms to initiate a discussion and/or identify examples of waste (government, energy or whatever)
- Crowd sourcing to highlight, refine or deprecate the example of waste
- Filters to elminate personal or inappropriate examples of private activity
- Solution methodologies that allow network to resolve the best and simplest solution that saves money and reduces waste.
In the end we are centrists that believe waste can be resolved without expanding government, calling utilities evil, attacking those worried about the environment, or ignoring those worried about the risk of raising energy prices. Waste frankly is resolved by looking at a lot of little issues in the field, understanding the systematic source, and changing processes.
