OxBlog

Sunday, April 11, 2004

# Posted 10:34 AM by Patrick Belton  

PB ON THE PDB: While Kevin's as usual been doing some really wonderful blogging lately, I'm not sure I agree with him here about the President's Daily Briefing from August 6 which was just released:
[W]hat really struck me was that the whole thing was so short - considerably shorter than your average op-ed column, in fact - and written at about a high school level. This is an intelligence briefing prepared at the request of the president of the United States and he was apparently satisfied with it? Eleven paragraphs of pabulum considerably less authoritative than an average article in Foreign Affairs? Sheesh.
Actually, I'm not really sure I agree with Kevin here. If you look through administrations at documents prepared for the president (the National Security Archive has one fairly nice collection online), they're as a rule never over two pages. And while I strongly support inquiries into and subsequent reforms of both the analytical process and the current sad shape of information sharing among bureaucracies, where there's an awfully lot of good work to be done - what strikes me about this particular briefing, having spent some portion of my life reading sterling samples of bureaucratic argot, is that it's clear, concisely written, and packs a good deal of information into a short memo. If you'd like to see something that's none of these things, look around most government documents.

MAILBAG: A graphic designer points out how the PDB, which he notes disapprovingly "looks like it was done in Word," could be made more effective as a way of presenting information. Hey, we have a substantial readership in the EOP and national security agencies - for what it's worth, we're all for making the daily briefing as effective (and pleasant-looking) a tool as possible!
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