U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) is using a knowledge management (KM) strategy to address many of its mission-command challenges. In doing so, it has defined goals, objectives and activities that move the command toward full spectrum collaboration - not only within the command itself, but also across the countries in its area of responsibility (AOR).
USAREUR trains and leads Army forces in support of U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA), while providing command and control to seven brigade combat teams (without the benefit of a corps or division headquarters) and eight support commands. USAREUR also maintains a healthy and active relationship with the 51 countries in its AOR. In addition, USAREUR has four permanent garrisons in Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, as well as ttaining facilities in Bulgaria and Romania. This means USAREUR is in the unique position of having to handle issues and share information directly between the strategic level and "the foxhole."
In its mission to build partner capacity through the theater security cooperation program, USAREUR has assumed a "peers-leading-peers" role with other NATO members. By interacting with these countries on a oneto-one or one-to-many basis, USAREUR's end goal is for all partner countries to interact with each other as needed, without direct control from this headquarters.
When GEN Carter F. Ham was commanding general, U.S. Army Europe, he told his staff that it must collaborate as a flat organization in a many-to-many environment more efficiently. With this in mind, commands and staffs must be willing to collaborate and share knowledge to become more effective.
To help share knowledge, several collaboration tools were implemented. Two of the most important are the task management tool (TMT) and the master activities calendar. USAREUR's previous tasking system did not provide a seamless way to track taskings from the initiator all the way to the action officer. In this command, each staff had a different procedure for assigning tasks, and once assigned, there was no central area in which to collaborate. The TMT consolidates all operational and administrative taskings into a single tracking and collaboration system; users can view and track a tasking from start to finish, and leaders can track their organizational taskings through "one-click" status reports and "dashboards."
The USAREUR KM team modified the calendar developed by U.S. Army Africa to meet its requirements. This redesigned calendar enables the USAREUR staff and units to manage their events, and it can be viewed by everyone with an Army-in-Europe Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) account. Each event displays the "5 Ws" and links to resources and other activities associated with that event. There is also a roll-up feature that displays all events, with decision points consolidated into one location on the calendar.
As an organization, USAREUR has a broad mission and diverse capabilities, many of which are undocumented and thus not integrated into enterprise processes. USAREUR needed to develop a more efficient methodology in order to align strategy to tasks and tasks to resources as well as to provide for the regular assessment of the entire process. The staff was getting the job done, but how well?
We are now developing a strategic tasks resource assessment process, which coordinates staff functions responsible for developing strategy; prioritizing required tasks; aligning the resources of forces, funding and time; and conducting periodic assessments to ensure synergy in achieving the commander's objectives. This process will help meet our second strategic goal of maturing staff processes and information sharing.
To implement HQDA and EUCOM strategic policy guidance while planning, executing and assessing all USAREUR steady-state activities, we are developing a synchronization matrix that will highlight, prioritize and link relevant activities, resources, decision points and assessments on the twoyear calendar. The strategic tasks resource assessment process starts with a predictable battle rhythm and will then be formalized in the theater campaign plan.
Like other Army staffs, USAREUR is often challenged to carry out its processes efficiently because of a constrained collaborative environment. The Army in Europe has opportunities to train with multinational forces in accordance with EUCOM and its own command priorities. To manage this, the Army in Europe established the Multinational Training Division (MNTD) to successfully train multinational forces for deployment. As the MNTD began to build a ttaining plan, it identified the need to collaborate on a many-to-many basis. The MNTD found it difficult to share information about multinational force ttaining with U.S. Embassies, EUCOM and HQDA because of the geographic separation of locations and network-security constraints. After all, without this collaboration, it is impossible to meet all ttaining requirements.
To overcome this, USAREUR first considered using Army Knowledge Online, but that system did not meet the Army in Europe's requirements. Slow performance overseas hindered productivity. In addition, most users reside on the USAREUR domain where a collaborative environment exists. Thus the MNTD staff worked with EUCOM and Joint Force Command Brunssum to develop the Nations Helping Nations training tool, which allows trainers from NATO-member countries to schedule ttaining and see where multilateral training-resource shortfalls exist. In this way, one country can offer resources for another country's training event.
Although USAREUR is struggling with synchronization of ttaining, it is having real success with the actual training events themselves. Austere Challenge, EUCOM's premier annual joint and coalition training exercise, provides the opportunity to test information sharing. During Austere Challenge 2009, USAREUR participated as the joint task force. This provided an opportunity to collaborate with other service components and multinational forces using both SIPRNet and a coalition network. During Austere Challenge 2010, the Army in Europe pushed information-sharing using NATO's Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation System (BICES) network to communicate with the French air force, which played the part of the joint forces air component command.
During exercise Bagram 8, the Army in Europe and the Illinois National Guard partnered with Poland's land forces to conduct training in preparation for their International Security Assistance Force deployment. USAREUR extended the BICES network into the Polish ttaining area, which allowed their leadership to collaborate with U.S. forces. This helped the Poles develop their staff processes in English and provided them with current AOR information.
An additional hurdle for USAREUR is its unusual structure, which presents an enormous challenge in managing data. Data is currently stored in multiple locations (in SharePoint, in shared drives and folders, and on personal computers), which makes it difficult to find information among staff sections, let alone among major subordinate commands and outside agencies. There is no established formal publishing or content-management process. Specific and generalized information is typically ad hoc, and document reuse is minimal. In addition, data is not well-defined because of the limitations of having to search for data by file names. USAREUR is storing documents with multiple functions, which causes problems with version control - a persistent problem experienced across the DoD spectrum of operations. Documents are buried in deep-rooted file structures through which users have to sort.
USAREUR is currently implementing a process using meta tags to help define its data structure. Meta tags will enable users to search by product type, organization and key words in the product summary. Users will also be able to display the document in multiple areas while it resides in one location.
To help move data in a multinational and coalition environment, USAREUR is using High Point, a tool also used by the intelligence community. High Point enables staffs to move information between multiple classification domains. For example, High Point gives users the ability to move releasable information between networks of differing classifications. As useful as it is, however, this tool only scratches the surface - open collaboration at the multinational level will require a comprehensive cross-domain solution.
To be sure, USAREUR is using knowledge management to address many of the mission-command challenges it faces across its area of responsibility. This command understands that its strategic knowledge management goals must be in line with its mission, yet flexible enough to fit an evolving organization. USAREUR's knowledge management strategy - partnered with weU-defined goals, objectives and activities (along with multinational framing) - is moving the command toward full spectrum collaboration.
[Author Affiliation]
By LTC Scott R. Howard
and
CPT Jennifer G. Collins
[Author Affiliation]
LTC Scott R. Howard is the chief, Battle Command Support Division, and knowledge management officer, G-3, Headquarters, U.S. Army Europe (HQ USAKEUR). CPT Jennifer G. Collins is deputy knowledge management officer, HQ USAREUR, Heidelberg, Germany.
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