On the creation of a single mission-wide information domain in military operations: Application of the information clearing house and release gateway at NATO exercise Trident Juncture 2015

Abstract

NATO doctrine [1] clearly expresses that the establishment of a peaceful and secure environment requires a comprehensive political-civilian-military approach to crisis management [2]. According to [1], coherence was achieved through the harmonization of strategic processes, planning and objectives across the civil and military actors. This requires the establishment of trusted information channels between the actors. A cornerstone for this is to enable automatic or semiautomatic transfer of information between different security domains, therefore enabling a single information domain where partners can access and share the vast majority of mission information as suggested in [3]. The solution should ideally also enable information sharing with Non-Traditional Partners (NTPs1) in compliance with the NATO Comprehensive Approach to crisis management. An Information Clearing House (ICH) as introduced in [3] maintains a tightly managed catalog of mission relevant information, to ensure that users easily find and access the latest approved version of any information object. In addition, the ICH provides support to a release authority and to a Release Gateway (RG), which allow semi-automatic transfer of releasable products between different security domains. The combination of the three elements creates the perception of a single information domain. This paper presents how the ICH-RG and the hybrid confidentiality-releasability model [4] have been implemented at NATO exercise Trident Juncture 2015 (TRJE15) [5]. It describes the assigned roles and responsibilities for the information management and release processes as applied in this NATO certification event. Applied processes require the consideration of Community of Interests (CoIs) within the same security domain, which is not covered in the model presented in [4]. Furthermore, the real world application of the ICH has a much stronger focus on the publication of information from the lower security domains to the mission domain. Statistics for the release and publication processes are presented. The paper concludes with recommendations and required next steps in implementing the ICH as a capability in the federated mission environment.