Objectives
for the Working Groups
Each working group should consider operational situations and challenges
such as the examples above and develop concepts for applying commercial
technology to assist the operation. Commercial
systems and services can be used as large, self-contained parts of the
overal information infrastructure for the operation or they can be inserted
as subsystems within the military infrastructure.
Various alternatives should be considered and evaluated in terms
of the benefits, costs, and risks.
The introductory presentations during the first day-and-a-half are intended
to motivate further, detailed discussions in the working groups. The working groups provide an opportunity to
propose and evaluate specific concepts and to make recommendations that
can be offered as advice to government and commercial organizations involved
with planning and implementing future information technology capabilities.
Aspects such as interoperability should receive strong consideration,
especially in coalition operations where some participants have very advanced
information technology and others do not.
Commercial technology may offer an opportunity to provide equipment
to bring some members into the network, and this should be an important
factor to consider. The following
are some other important factors that may find significant benefit from
commercial technologies:
- Adaptable, and ad hoc networking
for mobile users;
- System management and control
across mulitple system administration domains;
- Information processing and data
management across domains;
- Security and key management and
distribution;
- Quality of Service management
across the broad set of coalition systems;
- Information services tailored
to user needs in near real time;
- Computer hardware and software
built for users on the move;
- Visualization and human-system
interfaces for users on the move;
- Multilingual and multicultural
language translation and semantic mediation;
- Multilingual speech-to-text and
text-to-speech processing.
This
list is not all-inclusive, and working group participants are encouraged
to expand on it as they see fit. The
important thing is to identify opportunities related to the factors so
that this workshop can help motivate progress in the right direction on
both the commercial and military sides.
The products of the working groups should be briefing charts that illustrate
the concepts and the potential benefits, risks, costs, and needs for additional
research and development. Where conceptual system architectures can be
developed, these may be included in the products. The working groups should also identify any opportunities for collaboration
between military and commercial organizations or between military organizations.
If any specific proposals for such collaboration are discussed,
these should be noted in the reports of the working groups.
During the course of each working group, it is important to bear
in mind that the overall objective of this workshop is two-fold.
One objective is to encourage an exchange of ideas among the participants
so that future initiatives can be developed based on these initial contacts
and exchanges. The other objective
is to provide specific suggestions for immediate actions to take advantage
of existing technology and to initiate important experimentation and research
and development activities. The
working groups are the main venue for accomplishing these objectives.
The products of the working groups will be presented in a plenary
session on the final afternoon of the workshop so that the entire group
can discuss them and develop a comprehensive set of findings, conclusions,
and recommendations. This will be done in a combination of prestentations,
panel discussion, and general discussion. The outcome of these presentations and discussions
will be captured in a final summary report that will be produced and distributed
by the organizing committee.
Next
section: Procedures
for Documenting the Workshop Results
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