U.S. Must Take the Lead in Setting Coalition Interoperability Standards

It is up to the United States, the global information technology leader, to set the standards for interoperability in a multinational environment-according to a Canadian naval officer. Capt. (N) Richard P. Harrison, OMM, CD, special advisor to the commander, Maritime Forces Pacific, provided a coalition partner's perspective in a panel focusing on multinational operations at TechNet Asia Pacific 2009, being held in Honolulu, Hawaii, November 2-5. In a coalition operation, countries are heavily dependent on the nation with the information-which is the United States. So, the standards that the United States puts out will affect all. The lack of standards agreements among many partner nations remains a challenge, and reliance on compliance of standards is up to the United States, he pointed out. The United States must be cognizant of challenges that other nations have trying to keep up with it, Capt. Harrison said. However, the United States should look at other countries' systems with an eye toward whether they are acceptable. Other nations often push solutions that are contradictory to the classified manner that the United States and Canada traditionally use in maritime domain awareness, he stated. The captain pointed out that the challenge is one of matching connectivity with risk in a multinational environment. If the United States is overly risk-averse, there will be no interoperability. However, one nation's concept of risk cannot be passed on to another.