Getting Strategic Transparency

On linking transparency and accountability, in particular about using our increasingly sensor-rich world. in the HBR:

" ... Whether morbidly curious or voyeuristically intrigued, millions of people worldwide have accessed the web streamed spectacle of BP's busted wellhead spewing oil undersea. The murky imagery, piped up via tele-robotically controlled cameras, has been surreal. This is what real-time ecological disaster looks like from Seabed Zero. Seeing is believing. No wonder Abyss and Avatar special effects guru James Cameron wants to pitch in on this deepwater production.

Without this submersible fleet of video cams and instrumentation, repair efforts would not be possible. That the video-feeds can go live and global — and have — represents the most remarkable double-edged opportunity for "due diligence" and "second guessing" in the history of catastrophe. Suppose the human interactions and technical instrumentation of Apollo 13's rescue could have been webcast live? The eerily impersonal environment of dull metal and dark plumes a mile beneath the waves shouldn't obscure the simple truth that networked "transparency" has literally transformed how everyone sees the problem.

This de facto real-time openness has imposed enormous self-consciousness and self-discipline on BP's desperate efforts to stop the leakage at its source. Whether BP acknowledges — or likes — this nakedness or not, knowing that the world can virtually look over your shoulder as you snip pipes or lower containment vessels cannot help but concentrate both the individual and collective mind ... '