JFCOM seeking collaborative source capability

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JFCOM seeking collaborative source capability

By Caron Golden
Special to Defense Systems

Let’s say that the Joint Forces Command needs additional military police from the services. Well, the Army has its MPs. The Air Force has something similar — police squadrons. And the Navy has its masters at arms. But, which organization has available manpower and how much can it spare?

For a number of years, JFCOM, the Defense Department’s primary conventional force provider, has been using Electronic Logbook to manage the force-providing process. It’s a Web tool that sends out e-mail notifications via Outlook, said James Pasch, chief information manager at JFCOM’s Office of Research and Technology Applications. But JFCOM is interested in having more substantial technology developed that can meet five force-providing areas: emergent needs, rotational, individual augmentee, contingency planning and exercise force providing. In short, the command wants to develop a global force management workflow system that will seamlessly allow force-providing organizations to identify and provide ready forces and capabilities.

“We’re trying to leverage new technologies for force providing that take into account all of the stakeholders and their needs in these five force-providing areas,” Pasch said.

To reach that goal, JFCOM has solicited ideas from industry and academia to develop an understanding of which technologies could be developed into an automated workflow staffing capability among contributing groups, such as Fleet Forces Command, Army Forces Command, Marine Corps Forces Command, Transportation Command and others. It’s envisioned to be built on a service-oriented architecture foundation.

Pasch said the plan was to bring key stakeholders together by the end of August to refine the ideas they receive. By the end of September, they would like to submit a document that captures the requirements to the Defense Information Systems Agency, which will spearhead the development effort. Ideally, a working tool will be in place by next June.

Of course, the stakeholders are watching this carefully. Although they want to work with JFCOM to streamline the force-providing process, there are issues of concern.

“What JFCOM is trying to do is get to a more collaborative sourcing environment than we currently have. But the problem we have is that some of the data is proprietary,” said Col. Edward Gibbons, deputy chief of staff at Army Forces Command Plans Division.

“When it comes to Army forces, JFCOM wants to have 100 percent visibility, but with that, they can make decisions. That’s my boss’ job. So while there’s some information we do want to share, we have to make sure we look out for the Army and not have to deal with misutilization of information. We feel that might cause us to have to spend more time defending our recommendations.”

But, Gibbons said, this is a friendly process that has been talked about for years. The concerns of the Army and other forces are known and they’ll have a chance to have input on what this technology does and doesn’t do.

“JFCOM has been very open about where they want to go, but there is a little bit of tension there, and we have to be careful,” he said. “We want to make sure that as this technology gets shaped, we’re involved in the process, and we are.”