Roadmap Reports / Headquarters
TFCO Roadmap Priority Report - December 22: Tiers 2.0

Welcome to this Roadmap Update, the purpose of this update is to communicate changes in the UNITAF Roadmap (https://unitedtaskforce.net/roadmap)

 

Foreword

I wanted to update you on our immediate plans and the Big 4;

• Approvals System - easing the burden on key decision makers
• Lesson Plans - unlocking the potential of practices and instructors
• Procedural Correction (PCFs) 2.0 - working towards better SOP compliance
• Tiers 2.0 - improving quality across all deployments

 

Eagled eyed readers will note the absense of the Role Certification System (RCS)  so what's the deal?

Some time back in August we began work on discussing changes to Tiers and PCFs while addressing some blue-on-blue incidents and during the course of that some decisions were made and for the time being at least, the initial plans for RCS were shelved. That said, we're still committed to the purpose of RCS, which is ultimately quality control and ensuring that everyone who is in a role has earned the right to be there and follows the SOP for it. What I'm going to outline below is still a work in progress but it's a good (albeit not final) summary of the new direction of these efforts - and while I will be cautious of making any date promises, the order of these items on the roadmap is quite clear - these are the 4 main priorities.

The purpose of sharing some of our work in progress is to keep you up to date with the direction of travel and where we can, get your input.

 

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Approvals System - easing the burden on key decision makers

The approvals process will streamline the approval and management for default arsenals, loadouts, SOP, operations, FTXs and deployments. This is a roadmap change which came from a realisation that we should unify our core systems rather than developing seperate systems across these areas.

After initial implementation of the above, the next step will be to grant Approval Portal access to involved non-orgcoc members (including those with the Recruitment and Retention Center), to remove barriers for contribution to all areas by enlisted. This system will unclog many bottlenecks across the authorisation spectrum which are causing much frustration to many of you, specifically the approval of changes to SOP.

When the approval portal has been fully implemented, the next focus that has been discussed quite a lot on senior command level is a Tiers and PCF system overhaul.

 

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Lesson Plans - unlocking the potential of practices and instructors

For a while, we've adopted Lesson Plans for all practices - but this is not yet something we have fully integrated into our systems.

The Lesson Plans database will allow us to;

• View all approved lesson plans, simular to the roles center
• See the exact context of practices when signing up
• Group ratings for practices based on Lesson Plans, to iterate improvements
• Approve instructors against Lesson Plans, to widen the Instructor Pool outside of the ORGCOC
• Automate the assignment of SOP to Practices based on Lesson Plan
• Improve the quality of Practices

 

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Tiers 2.0 - improving quality across all deployments

As this is a bit further down the list, details on the topic are still emerging and those details that we are presenting here are subject to, and likely will change as discussions are ongoing. What we do know is that the development of the Role Certifcation System has for a while now been shelved in favour of more fundamental updates to the Tier system.

 

Evident from this update from UNISTAFF in August:

"UNISTAFF have over the last few weeks, consulted with J6 and other relevant teams regarding issues with SOP compliance, which we now feel requires a priority change from the planned rollout of changes in 2022. We believe that RCS is not fit to solve the issues highlighted and that a fundamental change to Tiers is required with high priority to enact the required changes and move forward."

 

Our initial focus when revisiting the Tier system;

• split up certain combat areas to a more accurate grouping of roles
• develop an improved SOP enforement system
• ensure Tiers reflect as accurately as possible, the experience of the holder

The purpose of these developments is to combat evidence of slippage of SOP compliance in order to improve quality across all ORBATs, and to address some long term improvements to Tiers.

 

Some of the currently developed actions are:

• Limiting the calculations of all Tiers to a maximum of 18 months of practice hour data (see Tier Decay below)

• Changing the requirements to achieve different Tiers based on the slot frequency of a combat area

• Reducing the overall number of Tiers and dynamically assessing the requirements for those levels per combat area

• Creating 7 new combat areas, as follows:

  • Spliting the Combat Support Area and its respective SOP, Roles and Tiers into the following new areas;

    • Fire Support (IDF)

    • Combat Engineering (EOD/CE)

    • Logistics

    • Unmanned Vehicle Systems (Ground/Air UAVs)

  • Spliting the Mission Support Area and its respective SOP, Roles and Tiers into the following new areas;

    • Mission Support

    • Roleplaying

  • Spliting the Field Leadership Area and its respective SOP, Roles and Tiers into the following new areas;

    • Combat Leadership (Squad Level)

    • Field Leadership (Platoon and Company Level)

• Remove Tier 6, making the maximum tier, Tier 5

• Review the practice requirements for Tiers 1-5 to make them suitable and tailored to each combat area

• Introduce an update to the combat flagging system (PCFs) to better track SOP compliance

• Re-tier roles in all areas so that the majority of roles sit in Tiers 1-3, with Tiers 4-5 being used for where most experience is required

• Ensure all role areas have T-0/entry level roles or where not possible, utilise the L slot system

 

• RCS will not prevent tiered users from slotting, fundamental changes to Tiers will be required
• Relevancy of practice hours older than 18 months is in question due to SOP changes
• To change the attitude to Tiers to more of a releveant experience level rather than all-time
• Splitting role areas so that no area has roles which are skill or preference unrelated

• More tiers being created will trigger a full review of the requirements for each tier level

• All hours for roles moved will be redistributed according to new rules
• Combat areas more specific, better understanding of preferences, more accurate Tiering
• Better understanding of unit wide preferences
• SOP split into more logical areas
• It will be possible for users will be able to overtake tiers of older members due to degradation, allowing for healthier slotting environment

 

We will reiterate that this is being communicated as work in progress and there are no definitive dates set at this time and all items may be subject to change, but that it has been decided that this overhaul to the Tier system will take place prior to any continuation of RCS developement, and the need for RCS will be re-assessed following a review of this update.

 

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Procedural Correction (PCFs) 2.0 - working towards better SOP compliance

The Procedural Correction Flag (PCF) system is currently used to correct SOP non-compliance currently only has one type of flag. That flag is applied to correct a breach of SOP, preventing uptiering in the relevant practice area until the flag is cleared and issuing fatigue penalties.

The roadmapped changes see this being developed further with 4 stages of PCF, by allowing users to see PCFs via their Dossier Management it will be possible to more accurately track SOPs which need to be worked or improved on we want to change this system from a punative one to one that is there primarily to help users understand where there are SOPs they need to improve on.

 

 

By default everyone continues in the Compliant status which is identical to the current system with no positive or negative effects.

The Advisory stage will provide a heads up of where improvement is needed before any permissions are removed whilst still keeping track of SOP breaches. Much attention is being placed here to ensure end-users have dossier level access to this data so they are able to track their progression and make improvements.

The Warning stage will work similarly to the current single flag system - disallowing up-tiering and adding fatigue in the flagged area to encourage action on the relevant SOPs, this happens when Advisory notifications are ignored or not acted upon.

The Critical stage will disallow the slotting in all roles in the flagged area. Once the flagged user has proved they should be allowed to slot again, they will be placed once again on a Warning flag, now able to work their way back to Compliant status, to reach this status a user would have to show no interest in Compliant action on multiple occasions.

 

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So, that is a top-level summary of the 4 main priorities at present - the detail will almost certainly change, but I hope it gives you an indication of the direction of travel and our comittment to making our Deployments the best they can be by developing our SOPs through continual learning and importantly exposing those SOPs unit-wide in the easiest way possible. I said that our focus this year is quality and really that is the summary of these items. Don't forget there are some fantastic ideas further down on the Roadmap, especially Master After Action Reports (MAARs) which hopefully will get applied in due course.

Tomorrow, I'll be taking questions at HQin22 at 1930hrs UTC, so if you have any questions regarding this update, you can use the /ask command on Discord.

Major James
Commanding Officer

Major James
Chairman
UNITAF

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