Within the information environment (IE), adversaries exploit social media using their understanding of culture, beliefs, heuristics, and biases. Many challenges must be overcome to compete with these adversaries for global information advantage, including outwitting a highly adaptive, well-trained adversary; maintaining pace with advances in data science; the ubiquity of information technologies; and understanding relevant human performance capabilities. Further, effectively planned and implemented information operations produce measurable influence on decision making, perceptions, and human behaviors, but these effects can be difficult to measure. The current research began addressing these challenges by developing a method to examine and assess human sensemaking, problem solving, and decision making in the IE that provides the necessary data to inform decision making. Developing a well-rounded, technology-agnostic, and widely applicable assessment tool involved taking a systems perspective of information operations that combines the physical, informational, and cognitive aspects of the IE. Based on a previously developed mastery model of information maneuver analysts, we created a Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS) consisting of 59 measures of performance associated with measures of effectiveness that can be used across the information domain. We further enhanced the BARS and facilitated reliable data collection by using the Field Assessment System (FAS), a complementary ONR project, to digitalize the BARS presentation and performance ratings. Leveraging Power BI for data visualization and performance analytics across several user-relevant dimension of performance made data synthesis user-friendly which affords easy interpretation to inform future research. This novel approach to information maneuver analyst performance assessment allows research across domains to focus on the cognitive performance beyond machine use in the IE, which offers application in any field. In this paper, we illustrate the foundation and development of the OMEN measurement and assessment system from the perspective of the human performance and not the enabling technologies.

Keywords
COGNITIVE, HUMAN PERFORMANCE, INFORMATION OPERATIONS

Additional Keywords
Information Environment, Measures of Effectiveness, Behavioral Anchored Rating Scale