Wolf Blitzer calls for heads to roll after the Christmas Day attack. But Jill Dychè is a data pro, and she’d rather let the heads think.

“Who should get fired?” is the same conversation as after screwups in corporations, writes Dychè, principal at Baseline Consulting.

Instead, the government should be addressing process issues. Indeed, the real conversation should be how to move forward. These questions should be asked now: “How should we bring identifying data together? What are the key sources? How should integration, access, and usage policies be formulated? What would a sustainable process look like?” Those questions aren’t “who” questions, they’re “how” questions, and they should be front-and-center in the national security conversation.

Read the full blog post.

I was thinking about Government 2.0 at about midnight last night—when the dark, quiet world gives way to ghosts. Then it’s easy to imagine BI tools and methods opening government to the masses.

I had been reading about open-source government last night after Letterman signed off. That’s when everyday life recedes and gives way to things that might be, could be. I call them ghosts, and you might call them memories or fantasies or even perfectly modeled government data.

In that state of mind, somewhat in this world and somewhat out of it, I asked a nearby ghost what good might come of Government 2.0.

By the way, what the hell is Government 2.0? Here’s what I understand: It’s the use of wikis, blogs, and other Web 2.0 stuff to encourage a new wave of collaboration among citizens, government officials and civil servants.

Whatever it may turn out to be, I know the concept is alive right now. A friend just got pulled out the freelance world into a comfortable government job surrounded by what he describes as very smart guys barreling forward on it. (He doesn’t work with the other type.) I’ll hear the details tonight over a St. Peter’s porter.

The best of his observations will make their way into a BI This Week story I have to write by Sunday. The rest of the story will derive from material around the Web, from a Tableau Software user, and from the ghost’s narration.

Government 2.0 could be a dream come true, and it could be a nightmare. It’ll be both.

Will it be government workers with thousands of unseen eyes looking over their shoulders? Tell me, do goldfish perform better in clear-sided bowls?

Are crowds wise enough for this task? A similar question arose before and after the American and French revolutions, when some smart people insisted that a monarchy should run things. As it turned out, they were correct—and not.

When I asked the ghost what he thought, he vanished. Lunchtime, I guess. I’ll have to try again.

My friend Marco called me up scared of what Internet visionary Don Tapscott had said on Tuesday’s Talk of the Nation. Tapscott foresees a day when technology makes government—such as spending—directly accessible to the masses.

“Do you realize,” Marco said, “that all this Government 2.0 stuff, where just anyone could see where the money’s going and stuff like that, could make business really difficult for me?”

In the last few months, Marco’s business has grown like a bio-engineered fly. He no longer makes up false names for use by spammers, he has a crew of six teenagers doing that. Instead, he’s become a consultant for two companies he won’t name that have headquarters in Dubai and Sicily. I understand they’re into Indian casinos and gray- and black-market prescription drugs.

“Here, let me read this to you,” I said to Marco. I had a blog post by Tom Davenport, the big-time metrics maven, where he had just pooh-poohed Tapscott’s vision.

Marco’s busy these days, so I skipped over the first few paragraphs to the first sign of substance: “Davenport writes, ‘There may be a few hitches in this miraculous transformation.’”

I could tell Marco was already impatient. “‘A few hitches’!?” he scoffed. “Everything has hitches. The World Wide Web has plenty of hitches. I thought this guy had reasons it won’t happen. Come on, there must be more.”

I scanned down the long page. “OK, here,” I said, “he wonders how the federal government is capable of it. They can’t do much right.”

“They do some things right—stuff no one wants to hear about. It’s boring,” he said.

I could only imagine what Marco had seen lately. “OK, down a little farther,” I said, “he writes that these techno-visions are dangerous. ‘It might lead to disenchantment with the technology when it doesn’t lead to the promised result.’”

Marco was silent for a second. “What??” said Marco. “You read this guy? If he thought for two seconds he’d realize that means Microsoft is dangerous. When do they ever release anything that doesn’t disappoint just about everyone?”

“But—”

“I gotta go,” said Marco. “I’ve had enough of Pundit 0.2. — That’s 1.0 minus the wind factor. Bye.”

Update: Changed the lead.