CIFTS:Communications and Information Flow Tracking System

In organizations such as the Air and Space Operations Center (AOC), team members collaboratively process information about time sensitive targets for prosecution in time constrained situations. To assure the highest degree of performance, operators undergo periodic training. Training effectiveness is maximized by providing performance measurement and feedback to operators, so they can learn from their actions and errors. However, identifying reliable performance indicators is difficult. Electronic text chat has become a primary medium of communication throughout the military over the past fifteen years and is the essential form of communication in the AOC. CIFTS, the Communications and Information Flow Tracking System, will provide collaborative performance measures based on patterns of communications flow and models of communications content derived from chat data. These measures will be correlated with external performance measures (e.g., expert ratings, outcome measures) to validate their utility for unobtrusive team performance assessment. The resulting system will improve the team performance assessment capabilities in the AOC by leveraging a largely untapped source of performance data: inter-personal communications. Lessons learned from a deployed CIFTS system will increase the knowledge base in the team and organizational performance research area.