By Ann Roosevelt
The Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Feb. 21 created the Combined Arms Center-Knowledge (CAC-K), which will be a single place where operational soldiers can find what they need to know to make decisions and better share what they’ve learned.
The operational order creating CAC-K says the current environment is moving to a “write and fight” culture, where all ranks are actively sharing information.
TRADOC Commander Gen. William Wallace wants to improve the command’s responsiveness and relevance to the operational Army.
“From my perspective, CAC-Knowledge needs to create synergy in order to provide better knowledge products and services to soldiers,” the operations order said. “The intent of CAC-K is to provide coordination and synergy of the different knowledge organizations and processes within CAC, TRADOC, and the [joint, interagency intergovernmental and multinational] JIIM community. This will involve building linkages with important repositories located at the TRADOC centers and schools, and other key locations within the JIIM community. CAC-K will move towards creating ‘one-stop’ shopping for knowledge products for operational commanders.”
CAC Commander Lt. Gen. William Caldwell wants to leverage all capabilities to train solders for full spectrum operations. This requires an organization serving as “catalyst, knowledge architect, facilitator, and integrator.”
CAC-K, a subordinate unit of CAC, initially will allow operational soldiers to draw on the knowledge generated by organizations of the Combined Arms Center, the intellectual heart of the service.
Jack Kem, chief of the initiatives group at the Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., said five CAC organizations–the Battle Command Knowledge System (BCKS), Center for Army Doctrine Directorate (CADD), Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), Combat Studies Institute (CSI) and Military Review will first be harmonized within CAC-K.
“CAC-K helps to pull them together, so that you can share the databases and that you can collaborate knowledge creation as well as the management,” he said. “We’re trying to create it where someone can have a single entry.”
CAC-K Interim Director Col. James Galvin, said, “the intent is to integrate different activities…allow them to work together more efficiently. More importantly, produce better, integrated products and services.”
Today, for example, a soldier goes to the CALL website to ask a question can access that organization’s database, but not others. CAC-K will eventually allow a soldier to access one point and the question will reach out to other databases and problem-solvers.
Galvin said closer interaction between the five CAC organizations will result in more communication among the groups and thus benefit soldiers. The aim is to set some discipline in place, a hierarchy to manage knowledge processes and empower people to network. This is expected to focus efforts on priority things soldiers need.The organizations already have outside relationships and this new organization will enhance that.
If CAC-K can’t answer a question, it will be able to reach out to find those who can, taking an interdisciplinary and organized approach, not an ad hoc response. It could include experts from the War College in Carlisle Pa., Kansas University, or the interagency that will be pulled together to generate a response.
For example, the Army’s Counterinsurgency Manual directed by then-CAC commander Gen. David Petraeus pulled in all the experts in an ad hoc manner. There was no organization to centrally manage the effort.
“This is something we want to have as almost a normal way of doing business,” Kem said. “When we have something come up we’ll all get together, everyone knows the timelines we can work that together. The experts are already known and we already have databases we’re sharing.”
“The intent is that as much as possible it won’t require human intervention,” he said.
“This is a knowledge enterprise, and that’s kind of the right term, we’re not really changing any of the brands, but what we’re doing is enabling people to where they can go from one entry point and basically spider out to the rest of the enterprise, and be able to pull on all those resources,” Kem said. “It kind of harmonizes those resources together.”
“The idea is as we get this developed and start to develop this interactive databasing ability, we want to start to incorporate additional organizations who also do knowledge, to even expand the enterprise,” he said. “We are starting with just what we own, but the intent is not to stop there but to increase the enterprise to expand it and work it. Your imagination is what would limit you.”
For example, Kem last week met with people from Kansas University, which has many resources in a variety of areas. “We don’t have good visibility of what they do and they don’t have good visibility of what we do so we’re trying to expand the enterprise where we can share databases and we can also share expertise,” he said.
CAC is looking at the timelines of developing different doctrine manuals that come out–such as the FM 3.0 full spectrum operations, which is officially unveiled Feb. 28
Using CAC-K, the Army will lay out the publication schedule and what needs to come out for the next five years, with timelines for incorporating such things as workshops, symposiums, direct research, or lessons learned, where many can contribute.
“The whole idea is to focus a lot of the research toward the doctrinal publications,” Kem said. “Everyone knows it’s coming out and can contribute.”
For CAC-K, Galvin said, on the content side, ideally a soldier could type his question and do a Google-like search, and get not only what is needed, but the hottest type of relevant information that is vetted and accurate. “The reality is not going to be overnight.”
Another piece of the work is getting to the right expert.
With all the information available, “We’ve actually taken the concept of knowledge management and gone beyond it to include knowledge creation,” Kem said.
Galvin said, “We don’t want to make it so rigid it doesn’t adapt, nor be so chaotic it needs an authoritarian system.”
Eventually, CAC-K could have multiple layers, depending on classification and operational security requirements.
“Our intent is to start with the public domain and the AKO-enabled, which has the broadest range and broadest reach. So our intent is not to limit information but to make information available to everybody,” Kem said. “We’re trying to break down some of the barriers and be more transparent in what’s being done and the sharing of information.”
The operations order said: once a permanent director is appointed for CAC-K, that person will present an organizational concept brief to CAC commander for a decision that outlines CAC-K missions, roles, and functions; organizational design and requirements; and resource strategy covering the near-term (Fiscal Year ’08-’09) and the FY ’10-’15 Program Objective Memorandum.
“We’re going to be on the leading edge of this wave of the future,” Kem said. “It’s my hope that within 60-90 days this is a reality and that we start to do the expansion of the enterprise.”