Joint contingency contracting handbook 21st century

The model encompasses four domains: cognition, knowledge information , organization and physical observable effects. The Canadian Forces decision making processes are also described.

Expanding upon the preliminary stage-setting work e. During these analyses, the Joint Staff a grouping of Subject Matter Experts SMEs provided information regarding their roles and responsibilities, and products and interactions, allowing the flow of events associated with the two illustrative case studies one continental and one international to be examined.

The Gap Analysis included consideration of complexity and risk dimensions. This document outlines the gaps identified and relates them to JCDS 21 sub-project groupings. A number of general deductions and a series of operational requirements can be extracted from the review of Command and Control and Decision Making models; these deductions and requirements are correlated with the JCDS 21 Subprojects SPs , including Human and Organization Factors, Situational Awareness, and Planning and Decision Support.

In the scenario, a massive earthquake, registering 8. The earthquake, in turn, has generated a substantial tsunami, which has struck without warning. The effective integration of practice, people and equipment to conduct collaborative work is considered key to achieving decision superiority; hence an understanding of organizational and individual factors is the first pre-requisite. Other dimensions include the establishment of situational awareness, innovative planning and decision support and effective execution and oversight.

Shared intent and trust among teams, data fusion, knowledge management and presentational staging are also among the factors that will be investigated and measured in this project.

The complexity of the challenge facing the Canadian Forces will place demands on the existing Command and Control system, requiring inventive enquiry and innovative technology capable of supporting critical thinking, team building, and course of action COA development, shared situation awareness SA and execution management. The aim is to demonstrate the integration of concepts and technologies to enhance the SA of military decision makers by providing key enablers to support the situational assessment, particularly when working in distributed teams.

Although it has been agreed that this operational concept will focus on domestic e. It is understood that this CONOPs will be used to inform detailed planning as well as the development of a high level functional architecture. The workshop provided an opportunity for sub-team leads to describe hypotheses and plans, and to identify and outline expectations. In short, Effects Based Planning can be viewed as both an acknowledgement of increasing interdependence and an attempt to operationalise the principle of unity of effort and to reverse engineer strategy on a grand scale.

Net Enabled Operations is a complementary concept seeking to leverage emergent business practices and to exploit the potential pervasive communications offer. A key enabler to realization is a Collaborative Information Environment which facilitates the exchange of information, development of a shared appreciation, joint planning and synchronized execution.

Doctrinal change is needed to supplement and take advantage of technological innovation. Decision Rights involves institutionalization of a Competency, Authority and Responsibility model addressing governance in a distributed environment, i. This was necessary to ensure the inclusion of a conceptual backdrop, requirements identification, requirements application to the JCDS 21 project structure, and the exploitation of a vignette to illustrate how emergent POT factors might be employed in the context of a domestic scenario.

The importance of charismatic leadership is recognized in the literature, and is reflected in recruitment and selection policies, but is not included in the U. Furthermore, doctrine often distinguishes leadership approaches and relates the effectiveness of Command style to the contextual setting i.

Integral to the U. Command is duly appointed and accountable for both resource utilization including the well-being of allocated forces and the accomplishment of an objective. For JCDS 21 purposes, Command is considered the creative and purposeful exercise of legitimate authority to accomplish the mission legally, professionally and ethically.

This definition is attractive since it captures the elemental concepts, introduces the idea that competent commanders can exercise authority creatively and makes implicit reference to a social contract underpinned by common ethics. Authority refers to domain of influence and responsibility to the acceptance of legal and moral liability.

This includes procedures for dealing with uncertainty and managing risk. The NATO definition refers to that authority exercised by a Commander over part of the activities of subordinate organizations, or other organizations not normally under his control, which encompasses the responsibility for implementing orders or directives. Command creates and adjusts administrative structures and management processes. Hence Command is 5 Pigeau, R. Pigeau, R.

Framework for Evaluating Control Structures. Control has historically been constrained by the span and depth of supporting Communications. For a long period of time, the size of opposing forces remained stable. What has not changed is the essence of Command — the requirement to make timely decisions in the face of uncertainty, to identify and evaluate alternatives and determine choice based on available Information and Intelligence I2 and as conditioned by training and experience.

Information augments and complements Intelligence. Intelligence can be used to situate incoming data and through examination Information can be used to modify past analysis.

Here, two traditional barriers are being challenged; the historic distinction between Information and Intelligence is eroding and provision has been made for Intelligence to be an active participant in coordination centres e.

Current Information places Intelligence in perspective and tactical exploitation now more readily yields Strategic impact. Command and Control have co-evolved with technology. Computers have augmented and expanded the ability of humans to visualize, analyze and calculate; in some instances, such as missile defence when reaction time is critical, computers are sanctioned to exercise judgment and initiate engagement.

One challenge in a future Command and Control system relates to jurisdictional determinations i. The model views decision making as a rational, cyclical process and infers that the functions are discrete. Boyd draws particular attention to the significance of orientation. Orientation shapes observations, decisions and actions; misperceptions including deliberate deceptions can be fatal. Perhaps more significantly, Boyd suggests that decision-making cycles operate at different speeds and competitive advantage will accrue to completing the cycle before the enemy a premium is placed on speed of Command and the ability to control tempo and to make and enact decisions faster than an 7 Van Creveld, M.

Cassell, London; pg. Situational awareness provides the backdrop for conceiving and assessing a course of action COA. Decide involves formulating intent, assigning objectives and sanctioning a COA.

Conversely, at the Command level, the concept of Control needs to be introduced; it involves ensuring decisions are disseminated, intent is understood, activities are coordinated, and effects are monitored. Knowledge Management is a key enabler and an imposing challenge. In the past, the key differentiators were analytical quality and temporal horizon; traditionally more time and specialist expertise was applied to Intelligence and it provided the backdrop for decision making.

Compressed decision cycles have mandated closer integration of the two. The model shown in Figure 4 underscores the requirement to fuse Intelligence and Information to produce a current, coherent picture to support decision making.

As illustrated, the two processes can no longer be easily separated. Although there is minor variance in terminology, in essence, the left hand side describes the Intelligence Cycle e. Security sensitivities related to collection of Intelligence are a key differentiator and explain why, for the foreseeable future, a mirrored two loop model is appropriate.

These are combined to create an integrated COP and to provide decision makers and staffs with a shared summation and visualization of operationally relevant knowledge. The COP provides the departure point for both exploring options and monitoring execution of a plan. Due to organizational re-engineering, the analysis was not completed. However, the conceptual model developed Figure 6 has merit and provides useful insight and a convenient construct for situating Canada Command.

The aim of a FAA is to identify the operational tasks, conditions and standards needed to accomplish military objectives. Conversely a FNA is intended to assess the ability of current and programmed capabilities to accomplish these tasks.

A FSA assess potential solutions materiel and non-equipment approaches to resolving capability gaps. In essence, the C2 process can be viewed as systemic execution of collection, perception, projection and choice.

Figure 7 provides graphic elaboration, encapsulating the complexity of Command and Control and underscoring the importance of mental models and the cognitive domain. Through the employment of ISR and the mining of civilian and military sources, headquarters gather and process huge quantities of heterogeneous information. The decision-maker needs to make sense of the situation and understand its dynamics. Once situation awareness is achieved, a thought-driven process starts to determine possible actions and effects against a set of higher-level strategic objectives or goals.

The Commander will be advised with respect to the best way to intervene. Based on his personal mental model s and background, the Commander will develop his intent, which he will communicate in an understandable format to his staff and organization.

Effects resulting from actions taken will be observed and measured. This representation is Command centric and does not deal with the collaboration. For instance, collaboration between Commanders and Headquarters HQ is not shown. The first step is to identify prevailing circumstances.

Awareness and analysis can be both individual and collective. Education and experience assist in recognizing actors, factors and relationships. The product is a situational understanding. Plans and Decisions are perception driven. Again, this is scalar and the formality of the process can vary. In practice, decision making is more akin to a continuous, streaming process.

Goals, resources, uncertainty, and risks are being constantly appraised and decisions taken. Direction involves enterprise guidance and management. Such instruction can be vague and tacit, or specific and overt.

In more formal military processes, key decisions include determining objectives, establishing the appropriate Competence, Authority and Responsibility construct, and allocating resources. Direction has become synonymous with orders and more recently, Command Intent.

The specificity of the direction may vary leaving leeway for interpretation in execution. The feedback loop is particularly significant as Execution may alter Situational Understanding, require Plans to be adjusted, new Decisions to be taken, and Direction to be amended.

It directs action in foreseen circumstances explicit intent and guides actions in unforeseen circumstances implicit intent. Implicit intent includes a number of additional assumptions — embedded and unstated underlying and informing the explicit intent and is the result of dialogue and socialization.

Implicit intent guides subordinates in interpreting purpose and implementing explicit direction. Implicit intent includes a hierarchy of goals. Common intent 11 is the sum of shared explicit intent plus 11 Verdon, J. Transformation in the CF. Director General Military Personnel Strategy. The function of control is to enable the creative expression of will and to manage the mission problem in order to minimize the risk of not achieving a satisfactory solution.

JCDS 21 has developed a unified framework Figure 8 which illustrates the fundamental elements, provides common context, and presents an integrated vision. It assumes that a decision can be characterized as a cognitive or psychological construct guided by a will and influenced by circumstances. There are many descriptive models which have been developed to understand and prescribe how human cognition deals with decision making. While specific representations of information flow may be rare, many existing models describe the information entities that are handled and exchanged during a decision making process.

Institutional constructs are important. Decision making is based, justified, supported and legitimized by military organizations or, in a larger context, by the government or an international political body. Information flows within organizations to support decision makers and decision makers exercise Command through organizations. The outer layer represents this sphere where kinetic and non-kinetic effects can be discerned.

Many models describe the decision making process in terms of interaction of complex intelligent entities and some, like participative decision making and democracy, propose methods to integrate the environment of the decision maker into his decision-making EBO being a good example of a holistic approach.

In sum, the cognitive or psychological domain is guided by will and shaped by perception. The knowledge domain informs decision making.

It is supported by organizational structure 12 Guitouni, A. Physical, Information, Cognitive and Social. It also led, in turn, to the realization of the limits of linearity and recognition that such enterprises might also be treated as complex adaptive systems, sensitive to initial conditions and to emergent behaviour. Equally important, system-of-systems engineering highlighted the importance of boundary explorations.

Nesting is always a challenge. Command and Control is a scalable concept. The functions described can be applied equally at the enterprise and individual levels. DND provides input to the formulation of the national, geo-strategic policy.

Internally the Canadian Forces are organized along strategic, operational and tactical lines. National Defence Headquarters NDHQ operates at the strategic level and is responsible for contributing to national policy formulation and for overseeing departmental execution.

The latter involves establishing CF objectives, roles and responsibilities, rules and constraints, and progress monitoring systems. The Defence Policy Statement noted that key enablers to CF transformation included adopting a fully integrated approach to operations, improving inter-departmental coordination and updating C4ISR capabilities. At the same time that the Strategic Joint Staff was developed, Canada Command, one of the four Operational Level headquarters, was also established.

Figure 9 imparts a sense of the systemic interaction and accords with the Decision-Making Model introduced previously Figure 8. This has led to the realization that a distinction can be drawn between deliberate and reactive planning, and between routine and contingency operations.

As a result it has become increasingly impossible to draw a firm distinction along classic staff lines between operations and plans. These are no longer even if they once were discrete processes.

Operations in the 21st century have become analogous to continuous planning and planning and operations have grown into a single integrated process. In concert, the pace of environmental change has also necessitated frequent review and update of contingency plans, which has Process, Organization and Technology implications. One benefit is that this arrangement aligns much more closely with non-military staffs i.

Although prior work may inform and facilitate the preparation of contingency plans, there is no immediate staff solution. An unrelenting operations tempo is such that organizations seldom have prolonged pause but tend merely to transfer their focus. As only a single resource pool exists, there is a requirement to integrate all three sorts of planning so that temporal perspectives time slices are available to support a streamlined ability to arbitrate, allocate and relocate resources amongst competing demands.

Hence a future decision-support system must provide for shared work spaces and asynchronous collaboration. Only in the event of an armed invasion can DND anticipate being designated the Lead Department and CanadaCOM charged with coordinating the response; however this remains an improbable scenario. More likely, as fires, floods, and ice storms of the past decade attest, CanadaCOM will find itself in a supporting role in response to a natural disaster or pandemic, or a terrorist incident.

Col, Dr. CanadaCOM faces unique challenges. Given the primacy of the role, the CF is organized, equipped and trained to defend Canada and protect and advance Canadian interests i.

Operations can be characterized as Routine or Contingency. Decision rights are pre-negotiated. Conversely although existing Contingency Plans may determine the response, Contingency Operations require adaptation on short notice. An appreciation of asset availability and immediate dialogue will be necessary. This imposes a challenge given the number of stakeholders.

For example, Industry Canada will coordinate communication sector inputs to situational awareness. This underscores the importance of establishing a government wide CIE. CanadaCOM will require access to this broader information to draw from to inform decisions and to record inputs received through the internal chain of command. Among the associated issues to be addressed are multi-security caveat access, tailored visualization and CIE governance; the former is uniquely problematic.

Many Other Government Departments OGD peers have no requirement to see classified documents and are not cleared to do so. Access to caveat documents is intentionally restrictive.

Accessed October 10, In a crisis allowance must be provided for trade offs to be made i. In such circumstances, time will be of the essence and effective CIE governance will be critical.

An Emergency Management Framework for Canada 19 identifies four distinct functions. The distinction between Preparedness and Response is significant. While it is impossible to fully anticipate events and no plan survives contact with the enemy, it is equally true that there is considerable value in planning. Planning, the process and modeling, experimentation and simulation can serve to highlight doctrinal shortfalls and equipment incompatibilities.

More importantly, it can provide shared insights into competencies and promote trust. Collaborative planning and periodic exercises should be conducted to identify and rectify insofar as possible interoperability challenges, share tactics, techniques and procedures, and inventory resources and mutual assistance agreements should be developed before facing a domestic humanitarian crisis.

In an emergency, Forces may have to be drawn from outside CanadaCOM, perhaps even withdrawn from external exercises. Force Generation coordination may prove as important as Force Employment. CANOSCOM has the responsibility to provide operational level support to CanadaCOM and has a nationally mandated responsibility to coordinate movement of relief supplies and personnel into an affected area.

Likewise Air Tasking arrangements are unique. The success of these types of arrangements is contingent on the ability to share information and advice with superiors and provide direction to subordinates. Collaboration with Partners and Peers is an obvious prerequisite for success. Clearly collaborative planning tools are needed. Once a mission is launched the operational tempo will likely require constant adaptation.

One of the major challenges will be to create and sustain CIE compatibility. Technological advances and differing organizational rates of introduction may compromise CIE coherence. The first priority is to address establishment of an internal CIE. Carnegie Mellon proposed a Levels of Information Systems Interoperability LISI Model which distinguishes 5 levels ranging from Enterprise interactive manipulation through to Functional separate data and applications and Isolated non-connected.

Clearly, DND should aspire to the highest level internally, to provide an integrated Command and Control system. A strong case can be made that the Regional Level Headquarters should take priority.

Arguably, time and detail is more critical at the coal front consistent with Net Enabled Operations. More significantly, the CCDO espouses a decentralized approach, tables an intent to provide Regional Commanders with as much autonomy as appropriate particularly for routine operations and encourages liaison with local authorities. Only as resources prove inadequate are progressively higher levels regional, provincial, and federal of mobilization assistance activated.

The Regional Joint Task Force Commander is well positioned to anticipate any request and offer advice as the formal call for assistance is staffed. The ICS organizational construct is scalable and applicable to all levels and provides a departure point.

Although application may vary slightly, the command and control functions distinguished tend to be fairly consistently represented and are easily mapped to the military manning schema i. Communities of interest exist at all levels but are perhaps particularly significant at the regional and tactical levels where intent has to be translated into activity and there is increased decision urgency.

Prior modeling of the Operational Planning Process cycle by JCDS 21 suggests that the Command and Control system must accommodate a series of internal and external exchanges. CanadaCOM J1 staff may review personnel commitments with superiors, partners, peers and subordinates vertical integration prior to functional Joint Staff meetings horizontal integration.

This assures situational awareness alignment, shapes option development, informs risk assessment, and accelerates plan production. The insights garnered may facilitate execution. External communities of interest, including the public, will be equally important in many instances. Past bounds are blurring. The Government and Canadian Forces rely heavily on commercial infrastructure, particularly in the domestic domain.

Companies and military contractors are being used to augment the CF and even domains such as ISR have increasingly become privatized. Trust, confidence and working relationships need to be established. In this new world order, persuasion based on common objectives and shared situational awareness may prove potent.

Although based on fixed headquarters, their requirement for a portable decision support aid would likely exceed that of Commander Canada Command.

They will require insight to Departmental plans and operations and connectivity to the Regional Joint Task Force Commander i. Lastly, it is not difficult to envisage circumstances in which a deployed collaborative planning facility would prove a useful addendum e.

External events often serve as a stimulus and the situation context may also be important. This section provides a brief synopsis of these efforts. Deliverables included reports on Emergency Response procedures, scenarios, asymmetric and terrorist threats, and strategic-level information and task flows.

The project confirmed that the JStaff were engaged, as a matter of course, in planning, executing and sustaining operations in complex settings with multiple stakeholders.

The Operations Planning Process served as the reference for discussing and developing High Level Activity Models depicting staff practices. The rigor an architecture-based approach offered proved useful. The process disciplined data collection and structure; the Operational View-2 OV Figure 11 illustrates this point.

It was found that the JStaff and Liaison Officers play key roles providing strategic and operational level decision support and links to the tactical level. Further, it was concluded that the OPP provides sound doctrinal guidance but does not prescribe a linear process the sequence of activities is not as important as the priority and, equally importantly, most OGDs do not have an equivalent process; hence, process integration is required.

The Characterization of Complex Situations exposed the challenge and identified the requirement for process integration. Data collection and analysis activities were conducted between January and October ; a structured approach which included a review of the literature, observations and interviews was adopted and daily and mission specific activities were observed.

Data collection focused on decision making, problem solving, finding information, collaboration, and I2 analysis. Their roles and responsibilities, and products and interactions were documented, and the flow of events associated with two illustrative cases studies one continental and one international was examined.

A representative sample of the data is shown in Figure Extracting and processing information is more complex than discovering information; 2.

Defining the solution space was more complex than defining the problem; and 3. The risk dimension survey determined that: 1. Control of resources is constrained by the number of external stakeholders; 3. Face to face meetings were more crucial to mission planning than to the OPP product generation; and 4. Routine meetings focused on the longer term typically more than one month. Contingency operations would likely have been preoccupied with more immediate timeframes. The Needs Analysis included communications profiling and found: 1.

Although most decisions were objective, provision should also be made to accommodate intuition. Oral communication was the most common medium across all observation forums and there was extensive use of PowerPoint.

The previous study also noted that Command View CV has evolved significantly; more use is likely being made of the portal, and liaison officers can be a valuable resource but must be linked if the potential they offer is to be exploited. The findings provide emphasis to the usefulness of graphic presentations i.

These results, in essence the Functional Needs Analysis, were presented and discussed at a workshop. Table 1 outlines the gaps identified and relates them to JCDS21 sub-project groupings.

Develop shared situational Information Exchange dynamic streams and issues. Monitor execution and adapt as necessary. Develop continuous integrated stakeholders; and operations plans. Execute plan with leadership and Using Advice and Integrating process influenced by individual experience direction; and Information in Human Decision- and knowledge to ensure appropriateness 5.

Monitor execution and adapt as Making and effectiveness of decision making; necessary. Execute plan with leadership and Commanders' Decision Making process influenced by individual experience direction; and Styles and knowledge to ensure appropriateness 5.

Monitor execution and adapt as and effectiveness of decision making; and necessary. Develop continuous integrated decision making — strategic, operational and operations plans; technical. Execute plan with leadership and direction; and 5. Monitor and collect data; Heuristics and Biases in 4. Execute plan with leadership and Decision-Making direction; and 5.

Monitor and collect data; and Advanced Knowledge unstructured exist; 5. Monitor execution and adapt as Management Environment necessary. Monitor and collect data; Shared Situation Awareness the knowledge artefacts; 2. Develop continuous integrated changes: need an updating mechanism. Monitor and collect data. Develop continuous integrated information, there is a need to foster an operations plans; and understanding how each other works. Execute plan with leadership and of the decision, process of decision making direction; and and justification of decision.

Execute plan with leadership and Net-centric Operations materiel. Monitor execution and adapt as Management necessary. Monitor execution and adapt as way that helps identifying actions to be taken necessary.

WBE 5. Develop shared situational Execution Management in violation of assumptions in plans being understanding; Distributed Environment followed, implications to plan not fully 3. Execute plan with leadership and replanning good options overlooked or direction; and implications of options not fully understood ; 5. Monitor execution and adapt as and necessary. Perhaps equally significant, the project confirmed the requirement for continued research and the advisability of studying the OPP in detail given its role in the staff processes.

A business process is, in essence, a depiction of tasks and outcomes associated with a business activity. A business process characterizes tasks, roles, resources and sequential actions to be taken to satisfy corporate requirements. Business processes detail the resources and procedures are needed to enable a business to achieve goals and to implement an organizational strategy. The goal of the modeling effort was to capture the main tenets of operations planning at a military headquarters i.

This proved to be an amalgam of explicitly recorded Standard Operating Procedures SOP and doctrinally based Tactics, Techniques and Procedures and a number of tacit unwritten rituals, routines and best practices derived from experience.

The project validated the distinction previously made between: 1. Deliberate Planning: The OPP is done in advance as time permits a longer planning cycle in preparation of a mission or suspected mission. Orders may be issued to pre-position resources and to pre-assign roles and responsibilities.

In time critical situations, a condensed planning process is followed. These goals are then used to generate Use Cases. Hence a Use Case can be thought of as a sequence of interactions relating actors, triggers and activities. Artisan is another commercially available software package which can be used to generate Use Cases. It allows model developers to use natural language to express objects, business rules and procedures.

This knowledge can be applied to study system performance in real or simulated real time. Hence developers can dynamically model, imitate and visualize business processes to quickly design and test prototypes and explore system behaviour. A rules-driven business process modeling BPM product, ReThink incorporates time-sensitive business rules, process modeling and simulation.

It enables representation of a business process as it operates today but, more importantly, it has the potential to support the modeling of a service-oriented architecture. These included: 1.

Request for Information: Inputs such as Government of Canada policy, intelligence products such as RFI and task force Situation Reports were modelled as inputs, rather than full processes. As a web portal, activities focused on: 1 posting information; and 2 pulling information.

Some provision was made for other tools used to facilitate information exchange and communication including email, fax, phone and meetings. Battle Rhythm: The battle rhythm was captured by modelling the Battle Staff meetings associated with executing planning OPP and the daily Situation Report process which drives the work cycle.

Full use was made of prior ground work and activity models. Initial efforts involved elaboration of information gathered under auspices of the Characterization of Complex Situations. An iterative approach was adopted. The series serves to illustrate how depth is added. In this case, Receipt of a Planning Task can be decomposed further into subordinate activities. Each of the pink activity blocks can be further broken down, and inputs, outputs, resource pools and rules can be assigned.

First it demonstrated the ability to transition from static DoDAF representations into an executable model. Secondly the ReThink model supported exploratory analysis. This remains ongoing work but, for example, the time and resource requirements to support preparation of a routine Situation Report for a major event were modelled.

Inputs include procedural delays with appropriate distribution curves , number of clerks and transmission means e. Simulation allows for concepts, procedural enhancements and organizational changes to be investigated prior to experimentation, and is the logical prelude to constructive experimentation. The exercise objectives included: establishing and maintaining SA, conducting collaborative planning, and coordinating incident management support.

A number of events varying in severity and scope as well as occurring in different regions were also introduced to test the C2 structure. Approximately eight to ten scientists from JCDS 21 across four sites observed the proceedings and administered questionnaires and interviews. However choice should not be left to the sender. The rule set must be agreed upon, understood and adhered to. Network convergence and improvement in Standard Operating Procedures are needed to ensure that stakeholders can rely on information being accessible when and where expected.

This was identified as a major issue. Classified information had to be extracted and filtered before it could be passed.

In summary, the design and content of the screen need to be revisited to satisfy operational requirements. This would seem to reinforce the value of Deliberate Planning and indicate a larger role for Modeling and Simulation. Elimination of Service specific applications and introduction of common datasets Total Resource Visibility are key enablers to addressing this challenge. An integrating framework and collaborative tools are missing and needed.

Staff will continue to play a critical role in decision support — mobilizing and collating knowledge, offering timely, coherent advice and coordinating and monitoring execution of activities.

Consideration must be given to staff selection, training and organization, and the technology they use exploited wisely to support judgment. Both fusion and assessment assistance is required.

Increased economic coupling has both expanded and obscured state interests and the proliferation of weapons and knowledge has empowered previously veiled non-state actors. In short the current and projected security environment is notable for its volatility and complexity. Standing alliances have ceded primacy to selective engagement and ad hoc coalitions; sensitivity to collateral damage and casualties has underscored the importance of precision targeting, while pervasive media coverage and tacit recognition of opportunity costs of conflict has led to an increased focus on end-states and associated ways and means.

Effects Based Planning is a conceptual response to these factors. EBP is an attempt to address contemporary political challenges and attend to public expectations pertaining to the application of state power and military effectiveness.

EBP can be viewed as both an extrapolation of the unity of effort principle and as an attempt to reverse engineer strategy; that is, to work back from a set of desired outcomes, or end-states. The concept also acknowledges the importance of the non-kinetic realm and argues for a more nuanced and agile approach to force employment to create outcomes which will contribute to achieving an overall goal. It leverages emergent business practices and exploits potential pervasive communications.

Taking a holistic approach to security challenges involves coming to grips with multiple jurisdictions often with overlapping responsibilities. Some of these evolve into quasi-permanent standing networks while others develop and disband around a specific operation. It is this fluidity which poses both opportunity and challenge. This, in turn, will facilitate collaboration vertical and horizontal and generate shared situational awareness empowering self-synchronization and increased mission effectiveness.

In effect, it envisages Command and Control as a collective, devolved responsibility. Point to point integration is increasingly problematic. Each interface requires tight coupling which restricts agility, and changes incur systems of systems engineering time and dollar costs.

This is incompatible with the vision Net Enable Operations espouses of efficient and dynamic associations. System-of-systems testing and validation is likely to be distributed and will require consideration of boundaries, interfaces and behavioural performance. This also speaks to the pressing requirement for addressing nomenclature, symbology, interaction protocols and human interactions to ensure usability i.

Net Enabled Operations technology creates an environment which facilitates if not invites micromanagement. The ease of access provided through pervasive connectivity threatens to erode the traditional lines between the strategic, operational and tactical levels of war and permits interactive decision making. Increasing staff specialization and rise of cross-functional decision and product teams have been introduced in response. Governance becomes a significant issue. Centralization offers the advantage of building organizational competence, strengthening policy control, pulling authority to the headquarters and bringing issues closer to the Commander.

The objective in designing a Command and Control system is to balance these opposing forces and to exploit the merits each offers.

Reducing uncertainty insofar as possible and timely access to information remains key to decision making irrespective of the model used. The principles of visibility, accessibility and understandability underpin Net Enabled Operations and Mission Command concepts. The first suggests that unanticipated users may discover information; the second that they will pull the data if control policies permit and the third that they will be able to use the data.

Focusing on outcomes, aligning tiered planning, and integrating activities are all inextricably linked to timely access to a pool of prior intelligence and expertise, and an accurate inventory of capability options. The latter will be critical in validating options insofar as possible, a causal relationship and identifying alternatives. Increasing interdependence dictates widening this virtual knowledge base and accepting outsourcing i.

The key to success will lie in ensuring that the stored information and sources are identifiable, accessible, and explicable i.

Not least, provision must be made for a common geospatial database. For the Canadian Forces, this will involve administering knowledge creation and transfer including socialization, externalization and internalization processes. The handbook is issued with a DVD that contains contingency contracting tools, templates, websites, checklists, and standardized training modules.

It is supplemented with additional information to serve as a joint resource. With a chapter directed towards commanders on how to choose a COR, the bulk of the handbook is written for the COR, detailing responsibilities and the details of contingency contracting. In addition to the handbooks, the Defense Acquisition University DAU offers a mixture of knowledge sharing assets and continuous learning course CLC modules that are available through their website.

Acker Library and Knowledge Repository. CLC modules can be taken for credit or browsed through for self-refreshing on material. Modules not only focus on specific roles such as those addressing the roles and responsibilities of commanders in the use of contractors, CCO refreshers, and basic. Millions discover their favorite reads on issuu every month.