Planning and executing exercises has no meaning if nothing is learned and improved for future military operations. For that reason, most of the western countries and International Organizations have developed their own Lessons Learned (LL) processes, along with their LL tools. The tools might work for the individual Organization, but when they want to share their lessons, or even submit their observations or lessons identified with another Organization, it is often not feasible because of a lack of a common standards for data exchange. This lack of interoperability results in “cut and paste” requirements between systems which discourages the exchange or is very time consuming. The United States for example, wanted to share their lessons from the multinational NATO exercise Trident Juncture 18 with other participating nations. After many efforts it was deemed not possible due to lack of standards and the ability to easily exchange data in the same formats and structure. Also, other nations tried to share lesson learned data from operations and exercises with UN, EU and other partner organizations but the lack of common standards made it complex and time comsuming. In order to address this gap in the interoperability of the different LL tools and systems, the NATO Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre (JALLC) has developed a working form that could be easily adopted by all the NATO countries and partner Organizations ensuring efficient data exchange and ability to truly share data. This paper will outline the present situation, the requirements across our nations and introduce a workable solution developed by JALLC. It will also describe the experiences of capturing LL and ways to ensure these are shared between Organizations resulting in true lessons learned and not lessons identified but not implemented. The LL systems can also be applied to other areas of interest, such as eLearning, simulation,
Policy, Standards, Management, and Acquisition
Why are lessons not learned, how can policy and standards ensure data exchange and truly enable lessons to be learned
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