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The Coalition Of The Willing (COTW)

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Coalition of the Willing (COTW) The Coalition of the Willing (COTW) programmatic model is an informal and alternate organizational solution to the Joint Program Office to develop and manage a materiel solution for the joint force and interagency. COTW leverages the subject matter expertise of one organization and provides access to this expertise to through a common program office and contract vehicle. This organizational solution encompasses full lifecycle activities while balancing proper acquisition rigor with speed and flexibility. The selection of the organization of the program office must be carefully considered as inherent authorities and structures are needed to enable the unique characteristics of this solution. Users in the COTW …show more content…

This arrangement may be desirable so a user can have more direct control of the contractor or to meet special classification needs. The program office could accommodate these user desires but the benefit of the COTW model is that the user maintains the flexibility to choose. Operational benefits The operational benefits of this model include rapid integration of real-time lessons learned across the community into the development cycle. Management of an operations center by the organization of the program office can provide significant opportunities for rapid and responsive programmatic injects. The owning organization brings expertise to the operational aspect of the solution and a common and hopefully neutral ground upon which users feel more comfortable sharing operational lessons learned. An annual Working Group brings the COTW together to tackle a wide range of issues, inform the coalition, survey the environment, and network with the program office and user community. The momentum of a large coalition can influence senior decision makers, especially as they relate to policy, regulations, and legislation. This is especially true if the policy challenges span across DoD and other government agencies as the implementation can have wide-sweeping …show more content…

Since the program office is responsible for the contract, this role and responsibility must be clearly understood by all members of the coalition to prevent contractual violations of law. The benefit of the informal nature of the COTW is that relationships are not prescriptive and can be adjusted or tailored for each user’s individual needs. The program office will have to balance tailored user needs with workload demands. The owning organization of the program office can make decisions that affect the entire coalition. This could include the type of contract vehicle, the percentage paid by users, or divestiture of the solution. These types of decisions could be detrimental to the coalition and their materiel solution. The initial identification of the owning organization of the program office must consider the significant role this organization plays in the long-term viability of this solution. Balance The key to success in the COTW organizational model is to achieve balance between acquisition oversight and control with speed and flexibility to develop, operate, and maintain materiel solutions. Decision makers and leaders need to ask themselves hard questions about why traditional organizational models such as Joint Program Offices have not succeeded and if the potential exist for the COTW to address

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