CIFTS:Communications and Information Flow Tracking System

Electronic text chat has become a primary medium of communication throughout the military over the past fifteen years. In organizations such as the Air and Space Operations Center’s Dynamic Targeting Cell (DTC), it is used extensively among team members as they collaboratively process information about time sensitive targets for prosecution. 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. CIFTS, the Communications and Information Flow Tracking System, will provide performance measures based on patterns of communications flow and models of communications content. These measures will be correlated with external performance measures (e.g., expert ratings, outcome measures) to validate their utility for non-obtrusive performance assessment. The resulting system will improve the team performance assessment capabilities in the DTC by leveraging a largely untapped source of performance data: inter-personal communications. CIFTS has wide application in military organizations that utilize chat, including multi-vessel Naval operations and intra-brigade communication in the Army. Lessons learned from a deployed CIFTS system will increase the knowledge base in the team and organizational performance research area.