Lookouts...

"The afternoon of June 26, 1990, as I knelt beside a dead Perryville firefighter, I made a promise to the best of my ability to help end the needless fatalities, and alleviate the near misses, by focusing on training and operations pertinent to these goals."

Paul Gleason - Former Zig Zag Hotshot Superintendent

June, 1991

"LCES and Other Thoughts"

Good day! This week I have taken the opportunity to do some research and understand the background/meaning of an acronym (LCES) that I have encountered while reading numerous wildland fire fighting documents.

A quick look at LCES: "Protection of human life is first priority for firefighters. The elements of LCES form a safety system used by wildland firefighters to protect themselves from entrapment from free-burning wildfires and other fireline hazards. Since 1995, when arriving on a scene, a fire crew will establish safety zones and escape routes, verify communication is in place, and designate lookouts (known in the U.S. by the acronym LCES, for lookouts, communications, escape routes, safety zones)."

What is the role and responsibility of a Lookout in LCES?

• Have experience to recognize potential threats
• Be decisive
• Communicate clearly
• Be in a position to see potential threats and the entire crew
• Be in a safe location

As I explored the LCES concept and specifically Lookouts, I couldn't help but note the similarity to what we developed in our persistence awareness (PA) concept and use of Lookouts during real-world collaboration operations. In our PA concept, the Lookouts were responsible for unblinking environmental scan for mission-relevant change. John G., Research Scientist, Sandia National Laboratories developed the following graphic to depict the function of "Collaboration Lookouts" in maintaining PA for the enterprise. 

Fort Model for Persistent Awareness
Collaboratively Mastering Overwhelming Information
"Keeping Up"
John G., Sandia National Laboratories

Some basic principles for Lookouts in the PA concept, as outlined by John G., included:

• Lookouts must scan the environment at a rate matching information change
• Lookouts must pay attention as many critical threat indicators are subtle and fleeting
• Return on attention will be reduced if Lookouts are hyper-focused on any narrow issue/part of the horizon
• To help analysis, Lookouts can not perform analysis

Furthermore, we trained our Lookouts to:

• Look for and notice the subtle vibrations related to unanticipated threats for personnel, equipment and structures
• Be decisive in alerting the crowd in chat rooms to what they were observing/hearing and dialog as part of the sense-making
• Communicate clearly using chat
• Access and pay attention to hundreds (if not thousands) of chat rooms looking for the unexpected
• Do all of the above from a safe location 

Sound and look familiar? Bottom line - Collaboration lookouts are not distracted with building reports, making powerpoint charts, attending briefings or analyzing information.

To wrap-up, I continue to be encouraged with the similarities and opportunities of the collaboration concepts developed/executed in my previous career with what I am seeing in the emergency response world today. So, humor me a little as I think out loud...

Does the wildland fire community use an online collaborative Lookout in their chat tools in a similar way the Intelligence Community (IC) and Department of Defense (DoD) teams use Lookouts as part of their Human Net? If not, why not?

Thoughts?

Humbly,
Collabman

Silos of Excellence...

“In order for collaboration to take place, managers must give up their silos and their perceptions of power.” 

Jane Ripley, Collaboration Begins with You: Be a Silo Buster

Morning and happy Tuesday. Given the Apple Event is underway today (yes, I am an Apple Guy and I enjoy the new technology developments) I couldn't help but reflect on my look last week at the collaboration technology in use by the emergency response community. There are some pretty slick tools that have been developed but... 

I couldn't help but wonder if they have inadvertently created silos of excellence? For example:

• Which collaboration tool do I use during a complex incident (i.e., wildland fire, hurricane, etc.) and who makes that decision? 
• How does a unity of effort or team of teams strategy get factored in when deciding which tool to use? 
• What type of interoperability exists between these collaboration tools - that is, do they talk to each other and if not, why not?
• How challenging is it to build a collaboration concept of operations and enterprise when there are so many tools in play?
• What type of collaboration tradecraft, coaching and best practices are provided to the users of these tools or is it a pick-up basketball game and they make it up when they "show up?"
• What type of collaboration facilitation is used in these chat spaces and what are the expectations when you show up?

Once upon a time I was in a community where new, innovative collaboration tools would encounter a not invented here (NIH) backlash which ultimately drove who used what tool - which created a fractured community. Fortunately, over time the Chief Information Officers and staff from various organizations stepped in and began asking hard questions. Why do we have so many collaboration tools with similar, if not identical capabilities? What is the cost financially in operating this way? What is the cost from a mission perspective of fracturing a community that desperately needs to collaborate and share information? Tough questions that repeatedly exposed an NIH approach to collaboration tools.

Here is a quick overview (in no particular order) of the collaboration tools being used today by federal, state, local, tribal and/or non-government organizations providing emergency response services at the unclassified level. A few of these tools have been accredited/authorized to operate at the For Official Use Only (FOUO) document designation level. These snapshots were taken from each tool's website and/or fact sheet.

1. Domestic Operations Awareness and Assessment Tool (DAART): The DAART system was developed by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Future Warfare Center for the National Guard Bureau (NGB) in support of multiple mission areas including supporting local civil authorities. The Incident Awareness and Assessment information processed by the DAART system is used to assist authorities in responding to disasters for the purpose of saving lives, mitigating suffering, minimizing serious property damage, and protecting vital infrastructure, resulting in a cumulative effect of expanding collaboration, providing greater access and distribution of the information, and promoting user focus on analysis and  operations versus mere viewing of the information. The system is in daily use by NGB forces for many national and local events, including natural disasters. DAART is powered by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) Future Warfare Center (FWC) Advanced Warfare Environment (AWarE) Software Suite. The DAART fact sheet is here: 

2. Situational Awareness and Collaboration Tool (SCOUT):  ​The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES)—​in association with the California Department  of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and through a strategic partnership with the Department of Homeland Security’s Science & Technology Directorate (DHS S&T)—acquired the Next-Generation Incident Command System (NICS) software for use by California’s emergency services professionals. The California deployment of the NICS software is called Situation Awareness and Collaboration Tool (SCOUT). SCOUT provides an information sharing environment to facilitate operational and tactical collaboration among California emergency responders and interagency situational awareness for local, tribal, state, and federal partners for small to extreme scale homeland security incidents, such natural disasters, technological hazards, intentional attacks, and human-caused emergencies. SCOUT is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, and is being developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory in partnership with the operators from the California First Responder Community. SCOUT description is here.

3. All Partner Access Network (APAN): The All Partners Access Network (APAN) is the premier unclassified information sharing and collaboration enterprise for the United States Department of Defense (DOD). APAN provides the DOD and mission partners community spaces and collaborative tools to leverage information to effectively plan, train and respond to meet their business requirements and mission objectives. APAN makes these tools available over the open internet so individuals and organizations who do not have access to traditional DOD systems and networks can participate in information sharing and collaborative events. APAN overview is here.

4. RocketChat: The is the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) chat tool that allows users to experience the next level of real-time team communication--all behind the NGA firewall. Users can access RocketChat from anywhere, including web browsers, desktops, and mobile applications. The app’s customizable features allow users to tailor profiles by adding avatars; identifying favorites; and setting security, localization, and notification preferences. RocketChat is open-source software that NGA has enabled for enterprise use. RocketChat overview is here.

5. FireNet: FireNet enables interagency access for all National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) partners and those supporting wildland fire management to a centralized and secure network of resources including email, calendaring, documents, customized portal sites, and much more. A primary goal of FireNet is to provide services and functionality provided by commercial providers yet in a government-sanctioned and government-approved system. FireNet is a Google-based web environment with the security of a .gov site. FireNet enables NWCG partners to meet their business needs for collaboration and provides the full suite of applications with which users of Google products are familiar. FireNet facilitates intergovernmental teamwork by providing a collaborative workspace to message, schedule, share, review, develop, and store materials among federal, tribal, state, local, and territorial stakeholders in support of national wildland fire management. FireNet is here.

FireNet does have some challenges in that both U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Interior (DOI) Chief Information Officer (CIO) offices do not readily support the current Google environment due to growing security concerns. Items, such as data location hosting, data sovereignty, and overall government compliance are being scrutinized and required for all government services. Additionally, wildland fire leadership is concerned that the long-term cost of the current licensed environment is too expensive to support as an independent service indefinitely. As such, both have requested the FireNet project team conduct an analysis of the required capabilities of the FireNet environment, and what next generation technical solutions could be provided to meet security and cost constraints.

6. FireNet 365: In June 2019, The FireNet Program Team coordinated a list of capabilities required to be provided through the FireNet environment. It is evident that opportunity exists for the FireNet environment to be hosted in a more secure and cost-effective environment through Microsoft Office 365 (MS O365) licensing. DOI is moving from BisonConnect in its current Google hosted environment to an MS O365 environment, occurring primarily between September 2019 and March 2020. With DOI moving to a MS O365 environment, the FireNet environment gains the opportunity to potentially leverage the federally credentialed licenses of wildland fire operations within both USDA/FS and DOI and associated bureaus. The FireNet Program Team is diligently moving forward with transition and implementation through both USDA/FS and DOI Chief Information Offices and interagency wildland fire leadership to determine the best path forward for the next generation of the FireNet environment to support the capability requirements of the interagency wildland fire community. Note: MS 365 includes Outlook, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, and more.

An impressive list of tools but what is their effect on operations?

I would love to talk about how to tackle these challenges. My time is yours...

Humbly,

Collabman

The McDonald Doctrine...

"Nobody knows much but together we may know enough."

- Jolt

Happy Wednesday...

Weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003 I had the opportunity to be part of a team that piloted a new collaboration concept using a best effort, Monday-Friday, 8-hours-a-day schedule. It was one of the most challenging yet enjoyable initiatives that I had been a part of up to that point in my career. Additionally, I was fortunate to partner with a close friend and the concept, built around a light-weight chat tool (with additional capabilities), got its start on a whiteboard in a conference room. We waved our arms, marked up the board with the concept, talked to the possibilities of connecting people scattered around the globe and with every drop of passion we could muster - asked for and received approval to prototype a crazy, potentially disruptive collaboration idea. 

The concept would quickly get fully resourced, trained and moved to 24x7 watch operations just days before hostilities commenced in Iraq. We had no idea how effective it would be and how it would open the door for follow-on innovation in the years to come. Most of all, we were somewhat surprised by the development of online collaboration tradecraft, principles and best practices that were born out of a "learn by doing" approach. 

Why the look back at what happened 16+ years ago? 

These past two weeks I have been researching and evaluating the various collaboration technologies that are in use by the emergency management community supporting multiple mission areas. Many of today's tools are focused on providing a real-time information sharing environment (enabled by chat, shared files, video, audio, etc.) to facilitate operational and tactical collaboration for emergency responders to connect with the local, tribal, state and federal organizations responding to the incident. Many of you may be familiar with these missions under the umbrella commonly referred to as Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief (HA/DR).

As I began the research, which aligned nicely with the approach of Hurricane Dorian, I was struck by the limited use of some very capable collaboration tools. Now, it is possible that the workspaces supporting Hurricane Dorian were locked down in the various tools and not visible. That would be a topic for another blog.

The two tools where I expected to see vibrant, rich collaboration and information sharing for Dorian were DAART and/or APAN. Unfortunately, that's not what I observed. Yes, DAART had a number of workspaces carrying the Hurricane Dorian name but only one was "active" and it carried infrequent, minimal collaboration from a handful of users. APAN showed no reflection it was being used for this beast of a storm. 

All of this reminded me of the statement I heard/read multiple times from a talented, skilled, innovative and really smart guy who was hand-picked to be part of the initial small cadre of individuals that staffed the 2003 collaboration concept I referenced above. I nicknamed it the McDonald Doctrine in his honor and it became a common reference for me (and others) during the many collaboration boot camps taught in the following years. This was our early challenge in 2003 with collaboration and information sharing in the Department of Defense world of operations and Mr. McDonald addressed it clearly and concisely (as he did with many other challenges).

McDonald Doctrine: "Show up, get in the fight and contribute!" 

Yes, it was that simple but it clearly spoke to the human challenge we were confronted with in the day. 

1. Show up: The collaboration tool available at that time (Information WorkSpace - IWS) was mandated and available all across our community. However, we struggled to get people to login and give it a go. Email and phone calls, which were the comfort and channel apps (i.e., if you were lucky enough to be addressed on an email or were included on the phone call, you were in the channel) of the day, remained the dominant tools of choice and were being held on to by many with white-knuckles.
2. Get in the fight: For those who did launch and log in to the IWS tool, they quickly became lurkers and rarely engaged in public chat. 10% of the crowd in a chat space carried 90% (or more) of the work load. Yet, the lurkers had value-added and in many cases, mission-critical information that they continued to receive/share in email/phone channels.
3. Contribute: Jolt (my partner in crime at the time) would frequently comment that "...we may not know much but together we may know enough." In those early days we struggled with getting folks who were logged in to share value-added information and be part of the team of team's dialog to make sense of what it meant, what might happen next...in time to make a difference.

I wonder if today's community working emergency response operations might be struggling a little with what I call the McDonald Doctrine? 

If not, where is everyone collaborating in the online world for HA/DR missions like Hurricane Dorian? 

For those who have shown up in the online tool, what collaboration tradecraft and best practices training have they been provided? Or is it limited to tool training?

How is all of the tactical and operational information being shared for an HA/DR incident and...is it being seen by everyone who needs it?

More questions than answers...

Humbly,

Collabman