NEC themes: a conceptual analysis and applied principles

This paper deals with essential principles of Interoperability, Agility, Collaboration and Knowledge applied in the context of Network Enabled Capability Through Innovative Systems Engineering (NECTISE). Using empirical investigations these concepts have been identified as NEC-readiness themes and they contribute significantly to the realisation of NEC. Based on a systemic analysis and application of theoretical principles, the approach described in this paper contributes towards the demonstration of NEC as well as the identification of a limited set of critical features for capability planning and systems design. Some research questions are derived and discussed and a gap analysis strategy is proposed. These themes also defined as critical features have been investigated in a variety of contexts The main contributions of this paper are related to the mapping the themes to the military capability model and formalisation of the relationships. The purpose of such an exercise is to exploit learning from other (mainly civil) domains in the military context, with regard to the readiness themes which overlap with a limited set of critical features for design within a NEC context.