Linking Output Activity to Outcomes/Impacts in Complex Contingency Environments

One deficiency of existing planning systems is that they may report mission-level progresses, but are incapable of associating them with desired mission-level outcomes/impacts. USG agency planners and other organizations have produced general frameworks for measuring outcomes/impacts such as MPICE, but clearly planning activities and outcome/impact measure activities remain disconnected. We aim to develop a process framework and its associated prototype software, called LINK, which enables planners to interlink plans/tasks with outcome/impact measures. This software will be web-based and it will enable practitioners working at disparate locations to see not only one cohesive picture of the integration between plans and outcome/impact measures, but also allow them to share, respond and adjust ongoing planning and implementation as needed during the intervention and reconstruction. We will demonstrate that using LINK planners can do the following four activities: (i) import measures framework from MPICE and others, (ii) import plans/tasks/mission elements from planning software through XML APIs; (iii) specify the dependencies between plans and outcome/impact measures; and (iv) test the sensitivity of project progress over the outcome/impact measure. We plan to develop a case study involving the human rights crisis and intervention. Our computer demonstration will be based on our developed case study scenarios.