The NC3A Plans and Policy Division is responsible for the Agency’s planning and policy development business segment. The division is located in Brussels, Belgium, close to NATO Headquarters from which the majority of its tasking emanates. The Division has three branches dealing with policy issues, plans and concepts, and systems coherence and integration.

In the policy arena responsibility includes the development of policy papers in the areas of CIS architectures, open systems standards, NATO-wide IS architectures and plans, security and activities with the Partnership for Peace (PfP) nations. This latter task includes being the Agency focal point for initial contact and liaison with the PfP and other non-NATO nations. Representation in the NATO committee structure is also supported.

The plans and concepts branch's main activity is support of the development of capability packages to improve all aspects of NATO's CIS infrastructure. There is a focal point officer for each region as well as for the two major NATO commands. One element of the task is to look at improvements needed to the existing command and control facilities of NATO, after having reviewed both NATO and national capabilities and plans, costed technical solutions are proposed to obtain funding approvals.

The final area of responsibility is perhaps the most difficult: to ensure that all proposed new plans remain within the defined CIS-agreed system architectures although these may be implemented by any one of the 19 NATO nations or the Agency itself. The systems integrity branch has the task of producing the NATO C3 Integration Plan, which provides a costed breakdown of required improvements over a five year period. In addition this branch is responsible for the overall configuration management (CM) policies for CIS, as well as assisting in the CM aspects of all contracts placed by the Agency.

Latest News and Events || Organisation Overview Scientific Support || Planning and Policy Development Systems Acquisition || Other NATO Sites

Please direct comments to: webmaster@nc3a.nato.int