OWS Geographic edition
Alex Tabarrok asks what options there are for applying the Operation Warp Speed concept to other issues.
So summarizing what do we need for another OWS? 1) Known science–scaling not discovering, 2) Lifting of regulations 3) Big externalities, 4) Pre-existing motivation.
I say apply them to GIS. This Congressional Research Service article lays out the issues in detail, but they can be boiled down to the fact that there's massive duplication of effort at all of the federal/state/local and commercial levels of production for geographic info. This data is used for everything; routing, mapping, emergency management, disaster mitigation, energy production, geologic research, census and demographic information, and the universe of basic research that goes along with it.
The duplication is partially due to differing and uncoordinated standards, but the biggest single issue is that the Census bureau and Department of Agriculture are restricted from sharing its GIS information even with other federal agencies. So you have multiple other agencies like FEMA going out and building their own data sets. Each of these datasets then has to be independently updated and maintained.
Thus, in the OWS Rubric:
Known science–scaling not discovering. - Yes. We know how to reconcile and maintain the data.
Lifting of regulations. Yes. The regulatory hurdles here are federal and ridiculous. Literally the federal government prohibits sharing data between federal agencies. And we aren't even talking about the IRS or FBI or anything.
Big externalities. Yes. There's massive and ongoing duplication of effort.
Pre-existing motivation. Yes, a one-time reconciliation and standardization effort would allow for much more efficiency moving forward.