Managing Dynamic Collaborative Action Teams in a Net-Centric Environment

摘要

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) wants to improve Command and Control (C2) by leveraging advances in computation, networking, and information technologies. Agility is increasingly becoming recognized as the most critical characteristic of a transformed force, with network-centricity being understood as the key to achieving agility easily. (Alberts and Hays 2003, 126) The DoD Net-Centric Data Strategy outlines a vision for managing data in a net-centric environment that includes the concepts of Communities of Interest (COIs) and collaborative groups. While collaborative groups and teams are not new concepts, new technologies will transform collaborative C2 and how warfighters interact in the same way that the internal combustion engine combined with the concept of the horseless carriage to transform how we traveled. The technological capabilities envisioned for the Global Information Grid (GIG) will literally enable anyone to engage anyone else in a decision-making process irrespective of distance, time, organization and organizational structure. This paper applies the term Dynamic Collaborative Action Team (DCAT) to a dynamic and to some degree ad-hoc grouping of organizations or personnel for a specific mission or operational task irrespective of command echelon. The GIG environment will enable a DCAT to utilize new data and include members outside routine organizational and command structures. To do so effectively, the DCAT will require a management framework that accommodates its dynamic membership and processes. This paper describes a ubiquitous framework for the effective management of DCATs. Operational examples are provided to illustrate how DCATs would be employed to conduct net-centric C2 and how the DCAT concept may close the seams between the national, strategic and operational echelons of command and shape future C2 Policy for a net-centric environment.