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Environmental permitting for transportation projects is complex and time consuming. Communication and sharing of information between permitting agency staff can be inefficient, partially due to staff location in different geographic areas. The establishment of a Multi-Agency Permitting (MAP) Team is a project to demonstrate the advantages of co-locating regulatory staff from multiple agencies in a common office to enhance interpersonal communication and interagency coordination. Effective communication early in project development is key to risk identification and project management and consequently, maintaining the planned schedule and budget. The purpose of the MAP Team is to cooperatively process environmental permits for Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) transportation projects while protecting natural resources in the public interest. Participating agencies hope to demonstrate the efficiency and cost effectiveness of this new concept of focused governmental cooperation. The primary goal is to provide thorough, expedited review of permit applications to ensure that transportation projects are consistent with environmental regulations and agency agreements and policies. Project overview and methodology The State of Washington is investing in strategies intended to streamline environmental regulatory and permit processes. The creation of the MAP Team is one such strategic investment that is designed to demonstrate how WSDOT and regulatory agencies can work together to meet transportation and environmental goals. The MAP Team charter agencies include: WSDOT, Washington State Department of Ecology, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, United States Army Corps of Engineers, and King County Department of Development and Environmental Services. MAP Team members are co-located together a minimum of one day a week at the Department of Ecology's Northwest Regional Office in Bellevue. The MAP Team concept is being tested on approximately 52 transportation projects primarily in western Washington. The MAP Team has been up and running since early November 2003 and is scheduled through June of 2007. After initially defining how to work together, the team began communicating with their customer base in an attempt to make permitting processes more consistent and predictable. The MAP Team has been using this feedback to initiate streamlining opportunities to: define complete application(s), create early project coordination and MAP Team permit processes, identify improvement opportunities within each agency, and to create model business practices that will use existing project experiences to deliver future projects. These investments in early project coordination are being tracked through eight performance measures. The MAP Team model is based on developing a foundation of trust and open communication between a diverse, highly capable group of decision makers from the five agencies. This formula provides an accountable, transparent process that is able to identify risks and opportunities and to address and avoid conflicts early, thereby achieving permit decisions in a predictable and timely manner. Current results To date, the MAP Team has been involved in reviewing permits for over 25 transportation projects. The MAP Team work is being evaluated against a number of performance standards. These include permit processing time, baseline comparisons, agency investments, initiating change, conflict resolution, and meeting customer expectations. Evaluation of these performance standards will be used to determine the success of the MAP Team concept. Recommendations for the future Based on the initial stakeholder feedback from this pilot project, the MAP Team business model appears to be a good investment toward the delivery of transportation improvement projects. Because of this feedback, the MAP Team pilot project, which was to sunset in June 2005, was extended to June 30, 2007. After further evaluation, it is possible that Washington State may institute the MAP Team concept as a permanent business practice with the potential for growth in other transportation, intergovernmental, and private venture applications.

Supplementary notes: See also ADM202526. Military Operations Research Society Symposium (75th) Held in Annapolis, Maryland on June 12-14, 2007, The original document contains color images. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

This work addresses the optimal design of the monitoring technology for a team when collective liability can not form. It shows that the principal's optimal design choice is then to concentrate monitoring on the less productive agent in a team. By controlling the less productive agent she fully discipline the more productive. This result helps in studying the interplay between the institutional set-up and the technological capabilities of teams

Treatments of the concepts "team" and "team work" in human resources management are analysed in thearticle, distinguishing their links with organizational psychology and organizational sociology. This is a new viewto the team work as to the interdisciplinary research subject.There are no traditional methods to analyse organizational and individual activities, team-based modernorganization is rendered comprehensively. Team and team work concepts, structural borders are purified, workorganization activities research contents is provided taking into consideration the specific organizational context.It is concluded that team work as a phenomenon is subject of many social sciences (human resources management,organizational psychology, educology, organizational sociology etc.). Each of these sciences creates a peculiar(original) attitude towards the team work phenomenon.E. g., psychology explains the team work as interaction between individuals, educology deems it like competence,which can be trained and developed. In the organizational sociology context the team work is seen likeinteraction between groups and relations inside the organization. Neither of the mentioned social sciences takenseparately can create versatile and universal theoretical image (model) of the team work which would be suitableto execute interdisciplinary research and to develop human resources management practice.After having analysed the role of team work, the premises of efficient functioning as well as opportunities inthe contemporary work organizations, democratic reconstructing, qualitative role of team work is noted.

CD-ROM contains Adobe Acrobat .pdf files of materials in program handbook ; Shipping list no.: 2009-0101-S ; Cover title ; Mode of access: Internet.

from Scythe : Proceedings and Bulletin of the International Data Farming Community, Issue 2 Workshop 14 ; Objective: The main idea behind network centricity in military operations is to translate information superiority into combat effectiveness via creation and dissemination of a valid and relevant common operational picture. In order to achieve this goal, a number of preconditions have to be fulfilled. First and foremost, reliable communication lines have to be established both in gathering information about the current situation as well as in communicating a suitably aggregated CROP from the headquarter to the commander in the field. Therefore, the objective of our work is to investigate the impact of reconnaissance and communication quality on the outcome of a given military operation. Due to the nature of contemporary conflicts, we are especially interested in operations in urban terrain, which pose special challenges to reconnaissance as well as communication.

This proclamation from Governor Mark Sanford proclaims May 19, 2007 as Military Working Dog Teams Day.

This proclamation from Governor Mark Sanford proclaims October 14, 2006 as Military Working Dog Teams Day.

This proclamation from Governor Mark Sanford proclaims October 29, 2005 as Military Working Dog Teams Day.

The aim is to examine the discursive organization of "user-centred" team meetings in the Swedish rehabilitation sector. The "users" are aged between 4 and 30 and have been ascribed different kinds of impairments. The teams consist of one user and/or her/his relatives and different professionals. The analysis is primarily based on transcriptions of 18 audiotaped team meetings held by 10 different teams and focuses on two dimensions of dominance in interaction: the amount of talk and topic control. The findings point to professional dominance, but parents also have a great influence on the topic control. The degree of participation and the control of topics of the users who participate in the meetings vary, but most of the users become involved primarily by responding to the questions and suggestions of professionals and parents. In order to increase the users' control of the interactions the participants need to continuously discuss the organization of the conversations. The findings are related to complicating aspects of the conversations, including institutionalization, representation difficulties, varying communicative abilities, and expectations of expertise and adult liabilities.

There is no question that interdisciplinary teams are becoming ubiquitous in healthcare. It is also true that experts do not necessarily combine to make an expert team. However when teams work well they can serve as adaptive systems that allow organisations to mitigate errors within complex domains, thereby increasing safety. The medical community has begun to recognise the importance of teams and as such has begun to implement team training interventions. Over the past 20 years the military and aviation communities have made a large investment in understanding teams and their requisite training requirements. There are many lessons that can be learned from these communities to accelerate the impact of team training within the medical community. Therefore, the purpose of the current paper is to begin to translate some of the lessons learned from the military and aviation communities into practical guidance that can be used by the medical community.

non-peer-reviewed ; Community mental health teams have their Irish origins both in the deinstitutionalisation policy of the 1984 "Planning for the Future" framework1 and the challenge of intervention and recovery strategies for acute episodic and enduring mental illness. In 1994, Corrigan et al.2 observed that rehabilitation produces a set of barriers that are best overcome by multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs). The multidisciplinary approach was again emphasised in the Government's 2006 policy document, 'A Vision for Change'3 and the Mental Health Commission's 2005 study on quality in mental health care4. The reality of the performance of such an approach, however, has not met stakeholder expectations, according to the Commission's discussion document on MDTs5. It states, that despite user access to such teams during the past 20 years, only a small number of well functioning MDTs are operating in the Adult Mental Health Services.

Realistic military simulations are needed for analysis, planning, and training. Intelligentagent technology is a valuable software concept with the potential of being widely used inmilitary simulation applications. They provide a powerful abstraction mechanism required fordesigning simulations of complex and dynamic battlefields. Their ability to model the tacticaldecision-making behaviour of simulated battlefield entities gives them an edge over othertechniques. During battlefield simulation, these entities generally represent individualisticbehaviour, taking operational order from higher control and executing relevant plans. However,since a complex battlefield scenario typically involves thousands of entities, their coordinatedteam behaviour should also be considered to make the simulation more realistic. This paperdemonstrates the use of intelligent agent-based team behaviour modelling concepts in simulatingthe armoured tanks in a tactical masking scenario.

Within military organizations, research findings have lent support to the positive influence cohesion has on group performance in combat and non-combat areas, Beyond performance, research findings show that cohesion influences the job satisfaction, and health of military members, particularly under highly stressful conditions, such as those encountered in combat or extended deployments. The purpose of this research effort is to further analyze the strategies that should be used to develop cohesiveness among Air Force members. This was done by testing the extent to which cohesion changed when familiarization and challenging situations were coupled in a technical training course geared towards junior military officers. The findings suggest that over short periods of stressful activity, with a familiarized group, cohesion as a whole increases at an accelerated rate. Furthermore, an individual's pre-conceived bias towards group formation does not have much of an impact on the development of cohesion within the group.

CD-ROM contains Microsoft Word files of materials in instructor training manual, and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations ; Shipping list no.: 2009-0074-S ; Cover title ; Mode of access: Internet.