Communities of Interest (COIs) form when groups of users need to exchange data with others to support a shared mission. For example, we currently have a COI that tracks maritime targets of interest anywhere in the world. This Maritime Domain Awareness COI includes participation from the Navy, the Coast Guard and the Department of Transportation.

A shared vocabulary is necessary for the participants to understand the data about the various assets being tracked. A shared vocabulary helps when advertising the data by enabling more precise searches. A very simple example is the word tank—does it mean an oil tank or a tracked armored vehicle? Our armored divisions don't want to see information about oil tankers and our maritime units don't want to see information about tracked armored vehicles.

We have a specification that governs how COIs advertise their data. This metadata specification allows some basic search parameters to be standardized while allowing more precision searches based on context of data. All data must be tagged with metadata so it is useful to other agencies that could benefit from the information. The DoD Metadata Registry provides guidance for improving visibility of each COI through tagging.

Describe some of the growing pains.

CavNet is a great example. CavNet was designed as a Web-based interactive community to help officers in the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq trade information at the tactical level about insurgent tactics, gear and even advice on running effective Civil Affairs operations.

In one case, it was learned that insurgents were booby-trapping posters of Moqtada al-Sadr—a Shiite cleric. When the posters were ripped down, an IED would detonate. This information was posted to CavNet. Another officer, operating in another sector of Baghdad, read about this new tactic on CavNet and briefed his men about this new technique. Later that day, using this information, soldiers were able to spot these booby traps and disarm the IEDs without any casualties. Without CavNet there was no way that this type of tactical information could be disseminated quickly and efficiently.

This is the power of information. It flowed to the people that needed it and it completely bypassed the hierarchical command and control processes of the past. The downside of this approach is that it doesn't scale. A Marine Expeditionary Force located in another sector of Baghdad doesn't have access to CavNet because of firewall and access restrictions. Intelligence analysts operating in Virginia have no access to this information. Our challenge is enabling information sharing at an enterprise level. The Net-Centric vision allows an analyst in the Pentagon, a lieutenant in the 1st Marine Division or a major in the 1st Calvary to subscribe to and publish notifications of new insurgent tactics.