Brother can you spare a penny, or why no I in DME

[Tukhachevskii]

While I certainly agree that "efficient management of information promotes unity of effort and understanding", the way it is stated ascribes efficient management of information without placing the responsibility for it in any one location.

One other point about this is that by dispersing responsibility for "Information" across organizations, the individual organization is more likely to retain control over "important" pieces rather than let the "real enemy" (i.e. their bureaucratic counterparts in other organizations) get ahold of it.

I agree with a great many of your reservations. However, I can also see how treating information as the "property" of "stake-holders" (some New Labour speak there for you!) makes sense. Having a separate department or entity in charge of "Information" would divest those entites with intimate knowledge of their various fields with the ability to use such "knowledge" in a timely, appropriate and contextual manner. OTOH I agree with your proposition that doing so reduces the net or holistic power of "Information" weilded distinctly from D, M or E at the Grand Strategic/Foreign Policy level (of analysis). But I think the very notion of "Information" is what is problematic here not only sematically, but more fundamentally, ontologically. Does "Information" refer to the entire sum total of the knowledge contained in a (learning) organisation like the State or is it a very specific circumscribed region of activity (akin to that allotted to the PWE during the last World War)? The question, though banal to those better informed than myself, really calls into question how we define the relationship between Ideas, Structures and Processes (or Ideational vs Material power). It is an interesting and, IMO, particularly important question given the ideological/ideational component of the Long War which remains a (virtual) theatre of operations that remains under-exploited (at least in the open source media).