The sixth in a series of annual strategic-level conferences hosted by SACT, ACT Industry Day 2009 was held on October 8-9 2009 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

When the previous editions of the conference held in Berlin (2004), Rome (2005), Paris (2006), Warsaw (2007) and Brussels (2008) focused on the role of ACT as a new command within NATO, its missions and processes, ACT Industry Day 2009 was tailored to offer an opportunity to collaborate with industry on the development of military capabilities.

In 2008, in Brussels, SACT indeed introduced an initiative called Framework For Collaborative Interaction (FFCI) with industry and academia. The FFCI aims at enabling ACT to conduct non-procurement projects that more effectively leverage the expertise that NATO, industry and academia can contribute to Alliance capability development. One of the underlying principles of this initiative is that both ACT, industry and academia should contribute to and benefit from the collaborative activities set up under the FFCI umbrella.

This framework was then further developed with Nations, through the National Armament Representatives, and industry, through the NATO Industrial Advisory Group (NIAG). In 2009, ACT used the Industry Day as a platform to move forward and put FFCI into practice by offering industry the opportunity to participate in ongoing or planned capability development efforts, where collaboration with industry provides mutual benefit.

The conference theme, "Working together to improve interoperability", was chosen to convey ACT’s will to set up collaboration activities with industry to tackle interoperability problems within the Alliance. During the conference, ACT did not only ask industry how they anticipate, mitigate or even avoid interoperability problems, but also probe ways in which collaborative efforts with industry can help tackle interoperability challenges early in the military capability development cycle.

The 2009 ACT Industry Day was organized over two consecutive days – the first one being a plenary session with high-level keynote speeches and presentations and the second being dedicated to three simultaneous working-sessions where NATO/industry teams comprised of attendees endeavoured to develop road paths for solutions to identified capability development problems framed by the FFCI Activities.

Distributed Networked Battle Labs (DNBL)
At Industry Day 2008 in Brussels, SACT launched a project with industry support to develop a DNBL that would provide an additional mechanism to engage in future collaborative projects. The DNBL project commenced in March 2009 with funding provided by ACT and it is intended to deliver the framework by the end of 2009, with a pilot case to be conducted in early 2010. The objectives of the DNBL project are to compress the NATO capability development cycle to improve mission effectiveness and interoperability of capabilities when they are delivered to operational forces and to demonstrate the value of being able to conduct interoperability and integration testing over a distributed network. Industry Day 2009 will provide an opportunity to brief the progress that the DNBL team has made over the past year and solicit ideas from industry for appropriate project areas that are of mutual benefit and therefore suited to collaborative projects in the spirit of the FFCI.

Maritime Information Services (MIS)
The ACT MIS program of work encompasses several lines of development to improve currently fielded systems and address future requirements for enhanced maritime situational awareness, which includes maritime data sources and acquisition, maritime data routing, aggregation and dissemination and intelligent decision aids. MIS necessitates access to a wide range of information from various sources including national, commercial and open-source. Presently, NATO leverages agreements with commercial entities to access specific maritime-related information. For Industry Day 2009, the MIS team will examine the principle problem of access to information by exploring the terms and conditions of an enterprise whereby industry, or a consortium of industry partners, acts as an information mediator.

Logistics - Sustainment Knowledge Management
One of the greatest challenges faced by NATO in achieving joint deployment & sustainment is the management of sustainment knowledge obtained from the 28 member nations and the partner nations, as each use separate national systems. We would like to learn from industry if there are ways we could better manage this flow of knowledge and information. Within the sustainment knowledge management area, three distinctive functional domains can be identified: Logistics; Movement & Transportation; and Medical.
Possible solutions stemming from the ID09 discussions could improve the Logistical Functional Services Capability Package (LOG FS CP) currently being developed to improve the exchange/sharing of information (and knowledge) on logistic flow, movement & transportation assets and medical data.

The detailed agenda for this conference is provided here.

The biographies of the participants are provided here.

Speeches, presentations and briefs from the working-sessions are available below.

More information on FFCI and on the outcome of the Industry Day working-sessions can be found on the FFCI Portal.

Plenary session Documents:

• Deputy Secretary General's Remarks
• Keynote address by General Stéphane Abrial
• Remarks by Admiral Luciano Zappata
• Remarks by Mr Peter Flory
• Remarks by Mr. Georges D’Hollander
• MGen (ret) Picavet NIAG SG-137 Presentation
• Remarks by Mr. Wes Bush
• Remarks by Mr Antoine Bouvier
• Priority Shortfall Areas Briefing
• FFCI Briefing

Working-sessions Documents:

• Sustainment Knowledge Management
o Briefing
o Outbrief

• Maritime Information Services
o Briefing
o Outbrief