CHOUINARD: A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR UNDERSTANDING MULTI-AGENCY COLLABORATION 207 A Research Agenda for Understanding Multi-Agency Collaboration and Decision-Making

the area of high-level defence planning. His current research interest includes collaboration applied in the area of domestic security. He is a graduate in Physics from the University of Saskatchewan. The security challenges of the 21st century are qualitatively different than in the past. Due to the complexity of such operations military forces find themselves working with numerous other organisations to achieve a common goal. This has imposed new demands on capacities and capabilities; and consequently requires new models to understand key issues and evaluate options. Successful modeling must consider human and organisational factors, which are currently not adequately addressed and certainly not at a meta-organisational level (i.e., the domain in which organisations are created, operate and are sustained). Military forces are developing new concepts such as network-enabled operations, effects based operations and other information era advances to deal with these challenges. All of these suggest possibilities exceeding the scope of traditional modelling approaches. The aim of this paper is to discuss the issues that would define the necessary modelling skills and tools for operational analysis and propose an appropriate research agenda that has the potential, in time, to lead to the development the required skills and tools. It is further proposed that the skills and tools adequately capture pertinent conceptual and psycho-sociological, as well as informational and physical factors for the purpose of assessing the effectiveness of multi-organisational decision-making structures, practices and processes