The objective of the International Collaboration Board (ICB) is to facilitate the formulation and conduct of collaborative research efforts among the members' research establishments as a means to achieve interoperability of Command and Information Systems (CIS). Thus, by promoting and actively coordinating such research efforts, results will tend to minimise those differences which ultimately lead to problems of interoperability among CIS systems at the time of implementation.
The role of the ICB is to provide an international forum for the following:
· Formulation of broad overall plans
· Discussion of programme plans, objectives and progress
· Debate of programme priorities
· Keeping key members of the research establishments informed of the research work of their counterparts.
The ICB fosters collaborative activities among its members. Specific ICB collaborative efforts may be defined by agreements between the relevant ICB participants.
The ICB will promote the creation of an international infrastructure to enable multi-national demonstrations and experiments and appropriate independent and collaborative research efforts to take place. The ICB formulates criteria for usage and access control of this international infrastructure. Examples of the infrastructure are worldwide packet satellite capabilities, internetworking gateways and distributed processing and data base systems.
Members of the ICB will be representatives of National Defence Organisations, NATO Defence Organisations and National Research Organisations. Representation should be held to one or two persons per organisation coordinated through a National Representative. Overlap of individuals in international forums chartered for similar purposes is encouraged. The current membership is listed under members.
There will be a Chairman elected from the ICB members. Task forces will be developed as required and organised as appropriate to further the object of the ICB. Members of the task forces can be co-opted from outside the ICB, but will report to the ICB. The majority of the work of the ICB is carried out by electronic mail, but its Board is expected to meet a minimum of twice a year.
The ICB is currently administered by University College London under the auspices of the RADIOACTIVE project supported by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. While the majority of the documents of the ICB are private to authorised persons, those interested should contact either the Chairman or the National members listed in members.
Peter Kirstein (Chair) UCL, UK Kirstein@cs.ucl.ac.uk
John Laws Dstl, UK Laws@dstl.gov.uk
Eric Luiijf TNO, NL Luiijf@fel.tno.nl
Doug Maughan DARPA, US Dmaughan@darpa.mil
Alfred Moller DDRE, DK Avm@ddre.dk
Peter Sevenich FGAN-FFM, DE Sevenich@fgan.de
Chuck Shawcross NC3A, NATO Chuck.Shawcross@nc3a.nato.int
Steve Zeber DRDC, CA Steve.Zeber@drdc-rddc.gc.ca