ARTICLE: Flournoy: Create a U.S. Civilian Response Corps,
By JOHN T. BENNETT, Defense News, 27 Mar 2009

I've said for a long time that any serious effort to start building a Department of Everything Else would start with creating some bureaucratic center of gravity for the personnel who are being generated across the system but, as of yet, don't really have anywhere to report with their developing skill sets. The civilian corps idea has been bounced around for years now. In Q and A, I've always said that I thought it would take another big effort/mistake to trigger a serious leap forward, anticipating that either a revived effort on Afghanistan or some new triggered event would reveal far too painfully the gap and thus trigger a far more serious response. Is it better to see this happening up front, as we mount the revived effort on Afghanistan? You bet. Very encouraging.

So, good stuff that a lot of us have been waiting on for a while. Flournoy is a very smart player, so no surprise that, coming into the Wolfowitz-then-Feith job, she realizes past mistakes or limp efforts and wants to make her mark strongly from the start.

From the institutional perspective, Iraq accomplished a lot for the SysAdmin force and function. Hopefully, Afghanistan, in its years of efforts, will do the same for the Department of Everything Else.