Planning: Complex Endeavors

Abstract

Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. nformation is a strategic asset. Without it, the organizations and the operations they undertake have little chance of success. As DoD's Chief Information Officer, I am working to ensure that our forces have the access to the information they need, when and where they need it. It is equally important that they also have the capability to share information and to collaborate with the individuals and organizations they must work with to successfully plan and carry out operations. This will ensure that they will have the ability to take what information they need while being able to contribute what they know. The result will be an organization that can bring all available information to bear. REPORT DATE APR 20072Complex endeavors such as Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction missions are now the business of DoD. As this latest book from the CCRP explains, we can no longer be content with building an "enterprise-wide" network that stops at the edges of our forces, nor with a set of information sources and channels that are purely military in nature. We need to be able to work with a large and diverse set of entities and information sources. We also need to develop new approaches to I x planning that are better suited for these coalition operations. The implications are significant for a CIO as it greatly expands the who, the what, and the how of information sharing and collaboration. It also requires a new way of thinking about effectiveness, increasing the emphasis we place on agility, which, as is explained in this book, is the necessary response to uncertainty and complexity.As the authors point out, by committing ourselves to a network-centric transformation, the DoD is already on the right path. Such a transformation is changing the way we plan and conduct operations, making us both more effective and more agile. Our forces and our allies are taking the lessons learned from ongoing operations and, with a network-centric mindset, are developing new approaches to command and control, organization, doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures. What these new approaches have in common is that they are predicated upon a robust, global, secure, and trusted set of information capabilities.We...

A Conceptual Model for Network Decision Support Systems

“…These stringent NWDSS requirements demand agile collaborative decision-making models [2] which we address in our conceptual model. x Computational modeling and experimentation.…”

Advances in multi-agency disaster management: Key elements in disaster research

“…The military haves experiences with NCOs aimed at broadly sharing situation awareness of events using a Joint Operational Picture (Alberts et al 2002). Four basic propositions of an NCO and a set of governing principles for a network-centric force have been identified by the Department of Defence (Alberts and Hayes 2007). The tenets of network-centric warfare are:…”

Design of Adaptive Organizations for Effects Based Operations

“…This optimization can result in SOS configurations that are not able to adapt to unpredictable operating environments. "The wide range of threats faced today, their dynamic nature, and the complexity of the environments in which they must be defeated make it imperative to avoid 'optimizing' (perhaps more clearly said, 'fixating') on an approach that handles only one type of threat or situation well" (Alberts and Hayes, 2007).…”

“…If planners do not know what to expect then the plan must address a much broader set of contingencies than when there is no uncertainty. [Alberts and Hayes, 2007] Inherent to Alberts' and Hayes' comments on agile planning, is the need for systems to possess the ability to adapt to an operating environment that may be significantly different from the one for which they were originally designed. One way to address the agility issue, is to build systems that are composed of different types of systems and components that operate together to accomplish the tasks required by the organization -a system of systems (SOS).…”

“…This optimization can result in SOS configurations that are not able to adapt to unpredictable operating environments. "The wide range of threats faced today, their dynamic nature, and the complexity of the environments in which they must be defeated make it imperative to avoid 'optimizing' (perhaps more clearly said, 'fixating') on an approach that handles only one type of threat or situation well" [Alberts and Hayes, 2007]. The methodology presented here assesses alternative SOS implementations for SOS characteristics that address the interaction of the constituent systems and the ability of the architecture to provide multiple capabilities for the organization.…”