AIDS Treatment News #164, December 4, 1992
Keith Griffith
Government does have a successful track record at developing emergency programs when the country believes there is a genuine threat to national security. These successes, not surprisingly, usually involve the military. The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government, (published by Harvard University Press in 1972) by Harvey Sapolsky, a faculty member at MIT, provides detailed analysis of a successful undertaking of government that is still considered a model.
Sapolsky conducted hundreds of interviews and examined reams of government documents to provide detailed insight into how Polaris overcame incredible bureaucratic and technological obstacles to become central to the American nuclear arsenal. Very early on, Polaris supporters identified the key obstacle to their success: government itself. It was felt that the competing agencies of government, many who did not share in their sense of urgency, would do everything possible to not upset the status quo. To avoid dependence on the rest of government, Polaris supporters secured their own organizational autonomy.
Sapolsky identifies two key objectives that proved to be fundamental to the program success:
(1) Developing widespread support of Polaris both within the military as well as in the business and civic communities at large. Gathering this support was essential because the technological breakthroughs necessary to achieve the program goals were quite formidable at the beginning, and would require a sizable commitment of resources over a sustained period of time. Sapolsky relates how the Special Projects Office deftly used propaganda to win over the nation.
(2) Obtaining sufficient authority to manage the program independently from one central office, the Special Projects Office, which was created by the Navy specifically to develop this one missile program. The single best example of this success was budgeting.
Early in the program, this one office was given authority to prepare and justify a consolidated budget that would include the financial needs of all programs involved in any way with development of Polaris.
This gave one office, which was full of enthusiastic supporters of the program, significant power to determine the activities needed and to plan a truly integrated approach involving numerous parts of government.
There is much to be learned from reading this book as AIDS activists seriously confront what a responsive government must do to bring about a cure and save millions of lives. For one thing, it will give us all some hope to see how government actually can work. While the Polaris program was for weapons of mass destruction, the explanations in this book can help us learn how to move government for saving lives. Additionally, the opportunity we now face will not happen again, nor should it need to happen again. We must seize this moment and provide the Clinton Administration with educated advice on how we can indeed develop a "Manhattan Project" and find effective treatments for AIDS.
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