Introduction

Acquisition of complex systems and families of systems require the inclusion of the three major elements of those systems: hardware, software, and human operators and maintainers.  These three elements have significant effect on cost, schedule, and system performance and must be considered throughout the systems engineering process, the systems acquisition, and the human readiness process.  Historically, only hardware and software have been considered. This approach has lead to systems that are technically risky they are unusable by the human operators and maintainers, cost prohibitive over the life of the system, as total workforce requirements were not examined as part of the acquisition, and  are poorly integrated since they do not allow complete realization of the operational capability potential of a fully-integrated system.

As the processes of systems engineering and acquisition have matured as disciplines, the need to fully include the three major elements of the system has become apparent. Scientists from SkillsNET, the Army, and the Navy have initiated an effort to investigate the inclusion of Navy personnel knowledge, skills, abilities, tools, and tasks (KSATT’s) in acquisition decisions as well as other planning and projecting.  In addition, Congress initiated funding to support Navy exploration of the Army’s MANPRINT program, thus integrating human factors, personnel, manpower, training, and other human systems domains.  The Navy established the SEAPRINT (Systems Engineering, Acquisition, and Personnel Integration) Team to explore the Army MANPRINT concepts and their applicability to Navy issues.  The SEAPRINT team worked to establish taxonomies and glossaries to allow the successful integration of the human systems domains in Navy systems engineering and acquisition. 

Many of the human systems domains are in their adolescence as sciences.  Unlike the human taxonomy that have standardized descriptors, human systems design processes are striving to establish methods for validation, verification, reusability, and rigor in their analyses. In short, establish taxonomies with configurable standards.   Additionally, the integration of these domains is in its infancy and requires explicit data element and tool definition and use. 

Tools are required to support generation, development, use/reuse, validation, verification, and rigor in integrated data.  The data assurance process acts as one of these tools.  Integration of the data across domains is predicated on the sharing of aligned information and use of that information to explore the boundaries of each domain. The SkillsNET team inspired the creation and adaptation of the Navy Integrated Data Assurance Process (iDAP) data warehouse. The data warehouse current stores Level I, Level II, and Level III Data characterizations and initial relationships and business logic are being developed.

Level I Data characterizes the work, worker, and workplace and enabling knowledge, skill, ability, and resource elements. 

Level II Data relates the Level I occupational data to performance learning, detailing, and career management.  Level II data includes information on learning content and learning objectives associated with the requirements of Level I data to which Level II data are mapped. Level II taxonomy and data elements are currently being standardized to bring more fidelity to Level 1 Data descriptors.

The next logical step in this progression toward truly integrated human systems is to associate the Level I and Level II Data to their counterparts in the systems engineering design process.  This is because systems are designed and engineered for human use and therefore there are occupational and training issues that must be considered and to which mapping should occur.  The SEAPRINT team understands the need/requirement to treat Human and Performance learning data as a knowledge source in order to improve design and human engineering.

Level III Data

What are Level III Data?

Many people believe they know what Level III Data are, but further exploration indicates that there are a great many misunderstandings.  Level III Data are the smallest level of finite data.  They include the information necessary for developing models of human performance and for successful human factors engineering of systems under design or development. 

Level III Data act as a repository for the registration of related data from multiple disciplines within specific domains.  This data is collected and collated specifically for the development and design of war fighting systems.  The ontology and taxonomic approach allows for the level of rigor previously not available for these data.  The repository also allows for the potential reusability of the data previously unobtainable. 

It is essential that Level III Data be tightly coupled to Level II and Level I Data.  There is no reason to collect Level III Data as there are no jobs for which to design equipment.  Further, there are no training systems that exist in the absence of jobs to be trained or equipment systems to be operated.  Level III Data not aligned directly to Level II and Level I Data are irrelevant as well as useless. 

It is the genesis of Level III Data that allows the actual integration of the human systems domains.  All other approaches omit the need to deal with the data from the domains as of equivalent value.   It is in the collection of Level III Data and its further association to Level II and Level I Data that human systems integration occurs.

How are Level III Data used?

Level III Data are derived from the human factors disciplines and are possible from multiple domains.  These data add precision by further defining the Level II and Level I Data.  The Level III Data will be used by human factors designers to ensure that capabilities designed for human interfaces can be supported through appropriate training (information held in the Level II Data) and that they are successful.

How are Level III Data maintained?

Trustworthiness in the data is essential if practitioners are to continue its access and use, hence the challenge of keeping data current and accurate. Level III Data currency processes and business rules must be established to support the universal support of the iDAP model. To achieve this goal the SEAPRINT team and data use task force will establish requirements for the application and business logic layer. Human System Integration professionals can view and manipulate data as required to support their tools. The transactional nature of this design environment is significant.  Design changes to legacy systems will be uploaded to the iDAP using the tool of choice. The change serves as a demand signal for professionals that have oversight for Level I and Level II data. The training domain will adjust the performance learning content and measures and the occupational domain will determine the impact to operator environment and modify data accordingly.

How do Level III data relate to Level I and Level II Data?

Level III must be tightly coupled with Level I and Level II Data.  Without the occupational information and the training data, the design data are irrelevant.  Any systems under development or design must have an allocation of functions to the major system elements, the hardware, the software, or the human.  By specifying the capabilities assigned to the human through the development of the job, through the development of the training out to the development of the interfaces for the operator or maintainer to use, the system in acquisition can be worked from the systems perspective.  This approach also ensures that the system can and is mapped to the occupations of the people tasked to work with the system.  This also relates subsystems capabilities directly to work to be performed and the training required to achieve a required level of proficiency.  Further, this approach ensures that total ownership cost across the entire life of the system, from concept, through design, development, deployment, to removal from service, is accounted and used in the decision making processes across the enterprise.

Why is this important to the Navy?

As the Navy moves to capable manpower and other life cycle cost-saving measures, it will become more important to use tools that introduce rigor.  Rigor drives the need for data standardization, normalization, and use/reuse guidelines. Such standards and guidelines provide data that are reusable to the program that generates the data and to other programs that may be able to leverage previously collected data to ensure reduced technical risk and lower overall program cost.

Further, Level III outputs are sooner and more accurate enabling the Navy to deploy new systems quicker and more efficiently. The ROI transcends all three levels in iDAP.

The taxonomic approach inherent in Levels I, II, and III Data ensure that the data are reusable to multiple programs, even in the face of changing perspectives due to a variety of constraints.  The Level III approach also ensures that data roll up will be achievable over the longitudinal program events that will require use of those data.

However, no amount of rigor or reusability will overcome inappropriate use of the data or inaccurate data collection.  It is essential that HSI practitioners fully understand the implications and applications of the data they will collect.

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