Archive
Redefining Information Warfare Boundaries for an Army in a Wireless World
Redefining Information Warfare Boundaries for an Army in a Wireless World
Source: RAND Corporation
In the U.S. Army as elsewhere, transmission of digitized packets on Internet-protocol and space-based networks is rapidly supplanting the use of old technology (e.g., dedicated analog channels) when it comes to information sharing and media broadcasting. As the Army moves forward with these changes, it will be important to identify the implications and potential boundaries of cyberspace operations. An examination of network operations, information operations, and the more focused areas of electronic warfare, signals intelligence, electromagnetic spectrum operations, public affairs, and psychological operations in the U.S. military found significant overlap that could inform the development of future Army doctrine in these areas. In clarifying the prevailing boundaries between these areas of interest, it is possible to predict the progression of these boundaries in the near future. The investigation also entailed developing new definitions that better capture this overlap for such concepts as information warfare. This is important because the Army is now studying ways to apply its cyber power and is reconsidering doctrinally defined areas that are integral to operations in cyberspace. It will also be critical for the Army to approach information operations with a plan to organize and, if possible, consolidate its operations in two realms: the psychological, which is focused on message content and people, and the technological, which is focused on content delivery and machines.
Mileage-Based User Fees for Transportation Funding: A Primer for State and Local Decisionmakers
Mileage-Based User Fees for Transportation Funding: A Primer for State and Local Decisionmakers
Source: RAND Corporation
This primer presents some promising and innovative mileage fee system designs and transition strategies. For states or localities that are just beginning to consider the idea of mileage fees, awareness of these strategies can help determine whether shifting from fuel taxes to mileage fees merits further consideration. For jurisdictions already engaged in detailed assessments of mileage fees, these concepts can help refine system design — with the ultimate aim of reducing costs and building public support.
Adapting the Army’s Training and Leader Development Programs for Future Challenges
Adapting the Army’s Training and Leader Development Programs for Future Challenges
Source: RAND Corporation
The Army’s operational requirements have expanded since the start of the 21st century. Its forces must be prepared to react to a wide range of potential missions, ranging from peacekeeping to high-intensity conflict, and these complex preparation activities must be accomplished even while a significant proportion of its structure is deployed and operationally engaged. Complicating force preparation is the consideration that Army budgets are facing large reductions and efficiency is of increasing importance. This new environment generates a need for major changes to the Army’s programs for training units and developing leaders. RAND Arroyo Center undertook research designed to support Army efforts in these areas by examining the Army’s processes for managing its training and leader development programs. This examination concluded that current processes are not set up for making major, integrated changes across the range of training and leader development programs and that these processes need major change. Especially important is the lack of a true businesslike approach for making resource allocation decisions that achieve the best possible overall readiness benefit. Based on this examination, specific directions for improving training and leader development management processes are developed and presented. This report should be of interest to those involved in designing Army training and leader development strategies and those involved in the process of providing resources for their implementation.
Crisis and Escalation in Cyberspace
Crisis and Escalation in Cyberspace
Source: RAND Corporation
The chances are growing that the United States will find itself in a crisis in cyberspace, with the escalation of tensions associated with a major cyberattack, suspicions that one has taken place, or fears that it might do so soon. The genesis for this work was the broader issue of how the Air Force should integrate kinetic and nonkinetic operations. Central to this process was careful consideration of how escalation options and risks should be treated, which, in turn, demanded a broader consideration across the entire crisis-management spectrum. Such crises can be managed by taking steps to reduce the incentives for other states to step into crisis, by controlling the narrative, understanding the stability parameters of the crises, and trying to manage escalation if conflicts arise from crises.
Financial Sustainability for Nonprofit Organizations: A Review of the Literature
Financial Sustainability for Nonprofit Organizations: A Review of the Literature
Source: RAND Corporation
Nonprofits face a myriad of challenges in establishing and maintaining financial sustainability, and these challenges are exacerbated for nonprofits serving low-resources, high-need communities. This literature review identifies key themes and findings that may inform operations and decisionmaking related to improving sustainability in such organizations. The authors conducted systematic literature searches using a combination of academic search engines and the broader Internet. They identify and discuss key challenges of financial sustainability for nonprofits, such as over-reliance on external funding sources, demonstrating value and accountability to funders, and promoting community engagement and leadership, as well as promising practices for meeting these challenges and achieving financial sustainability. Additionally, the authors discuss unique challenges faced by nonprofits serving low-resources, high-need populations. It is the authors’ hope that this review will enhance the limited literature on financial sustainability in low-resource or high-need communities and will contribute to an evidence base for promising practices, providing leaders of and investors in nonprofits the ability to support and promote growth among organizations serving those most in need.
Flattening the Trajectory of Health Care Spending: Foster Efficient and Accountable Providers
Flattening the Trajectory of Health Care Spending: Foster Efficient and Accountable Providers
Source: RAND Corporation
Key Findings
- Providers drive health care spending through the guidance they provide to patients about needed diagnostic tests, treatments, hospitalizations, and referrals, as well as through their own fees.
- Providers can dramatically improve American health care by focusing on "value" instead of "volume," eliminating wasteful and inappropriate care, applying the best available evidence to their practices, and enhancing patient safety.
- Strengthening primary care promises to be a good investment, but the existing pipeline for primary care physicians is insufficient to meet future demand.
Reporting Adverse Information About Senior Military Officers
Reporting Adverse Information About Senior Military Officers
Source: RAND Corporation
Key findings:
- By law, the Department of Defense (DoD) must report adverse information about general or flag officers nominated for promotion, assignment, or retirement.
- RAND reviewed DoD and service procedures and identified areas where practice differs from what is required and where current practice or supporting data may be inadequate.
- RAND recommended corrective actions, including a dialog between Congress and DoD to recognize differences in perspective.
Unemployment Among Post-9/11 Veterans and Military Spouses After the Economic Downturn
Unemployment Among Post-9/11 Veterans and Military Spouses After the Economic Downturn
Source: RAND Corporation
Policymakers need to understand whether military spouses succeed at finding jobs and how veterans fare economically after they leave military service. But these groups differ from the civilian population in important ways, making comparisons difficult. Researchers must adjust comparisons to account for demographic differences across these populations to provide useful information to policymakers. Using data from the American Community Survey, the authors take a snapshot of unemployment among post-9/11 veterans and military spouses. Adjusting for demographic differences, they find that unemployment rates among these veterans are above those of their civilian counterparts but not dramatically so. For military spouses, they observe that unemployment rates are appreciably above those of comparable civilians but below other published estimates of the unemployment rate for this population. They determine that veterans and military spouses may face important employment obstacles deserving of policymakers’ attention, but the situation may not be as extreme as some have suggested.
Special Feature: Consumer Directed Plans and Health Care Costs
Special Feature: Consumer Directed Plans and Health Care Costs
Source: RAND Corporation
Advocates of consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) contend that consumers in such plans will have a greater incentive to make prudent, cost-conscious decisions about using health care, which in turn should drive down overall health care costs. Critics, however, have voiced concerns that consumers lack the information necessary to reduce spending without also reducing quality of care. RAND Health researchers compared families before and after moving to a consumer-directed plan with similar families remaining in traditional plans to see how behaviors change in response to switching to a high-deductible plan.
In the most comprehensive study to date on this topic, researchers looked at claims and enrollment data for more than 800,000 households insured through 59 large employers across the U.S. in a study funded by the California HealthCare Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The analysis shows clear cost reductions, but with potential areas of concern for the long-term health of enrollees.
Special Feature: Is Impulse Marketing a Public Health Risk?
Special Feature: Is Impulse Marketing a Public Health Risk?
Source: RAND Corporation
While the prominence of unhealthy food in U.S. retail locations is perhaps never more pronounced than it is now, in the days leading up to Halloween, store placement of candy and other junk food has a significant effect on consumer behavior year-round.
A clear example of this influence is the placement of candy at the cash register, widely acknowledged to be a promotional strategy called “impulse marketing,” which encourages spur-of-the-moment, emotional purchases.
In a recent editorial, RAND Health’s Deborah Cohen, who studies how environmental and contextual factors influence health, argues that we should consider treating prominent store placement of unhealthy items as a hidden risk factor. Impulse marketing influences our food choices in a way that is largely automatic and out of our conscious control, which affects our risk of diet-related chronic diseases.
Tests and the Teacher: What Student Achievement Tests Do — and Don’t — Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness
Source: RAND Corporation
Student scores on reading and math achievement tests tell us a lot about how well students are learning those subjects, but scores on a single annual test aren’t necessarily a good indicator of teacher effectiveness. For this reason, and because achievement tests don’t fully capture how well students are learning other subjects, skills, and attitudes, we need to combine information from tests with other measures to gain a better understanding of teacher effectiveness.
See also:
Multiple Choices: Options for Measuring Teaching Effectiveness
Teachers Matter: Understanding Teachers’ Impact on Student Achievement
Hedge Funds and Systemic Risk
Source: RAND Corporation
Hedge funds are a dynamic part of the global financial system. Their managers engage in innovative investment strategies that can improve the performance of financial markets and facilitate the flow of capital from savers to users. Although hedge funds play a useful role in the financial system, there is concern that they can contribute to financial instability. The collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1998 raised awareness that hedge funds could be a source of risk to the entire financial system. Hedge funds also invested heavily in many of the financial instruments at the heart of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, and it is appropriate to ask whether they contributed to the crisis. This report explores the extent to which hedge funds create or contribute to systemic risk (that is, the risk of a major and rapid disruption in one or more of the core functions of the financial system caused by the initial failure of one or more financial firms or a segment of the financial system) and the role hedge funds played in the financial crisis, the consequences of the 1998 failure of LTCM, and whether and how the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 addresses the potential systemic risks posed by hedge funds.
U.S. Overseas Military Presence: What Are the Strategic Choices?
U.S. Overseas Military Presence: What Are the Strategic Choices?
Source: RAND Corporation
Since World War II, the United States has relied on a global network of military bases and forces to protect its interests and those of its allies. But the international environment has changed greatly over the decades, and economic concerns have risen, leading some to debate just what America’s role should now be in the world. This monograph addresses one aspect of this debate by introducing a new analytical approach to defining future U.S. military presence overseas. It does so by first considering U.S. global security interests, then focusing on specific threats to them in East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. With that, the researchers designed a menu of global postures based on different strategic perspectives. They evaluated the global postures in terms of their operational performance and then compared them in terms of their associated U.S. Air Force bases, combat forces, active-duty personnel, and base operating costs. These analyses offer insights on the critical strategic choices that policymakers need to address and that the public needs to debate as they consider future overseas U.S. military presence. Among these choices are for the United States to depend more on its allies, rely more on U.S. based military forces, focus its presence more on East Asia or on the Middle East, or retain its current overseas presence in the face of expanding threats. Those involved in debates on the future global U.S. posture will need to make explicit their implicit underlying perspectives on what role overseas military presence can play in achieving U.S. global security interests.
When Patients Don’t Take Their Medicine: What Role Do Doctors Play in Promoting Prescription Adherence?
When Patients Don’t Take Their Medicine: What Role Do Doctors Play in Promoting Prescription Adherence?
Source: RAND Corporation
Analyses indicated that although physicians uniformly felt responsible for assessing and promoting adherence to prescriptions, only a minority of them asked detailed questions about adherence.
The U.S. Drug Policy Landscape; Insights and Opportunities for Improving the View
The U.S. Drug Policy Landscape; Insights and Opportunities for Improving the View
Source: RAND Corporation
Discussions about reducing the harms associated with drug use and antidrug policies are often politicized, infused with questionable data, and unproductive. This paper provides a nonpartisan primer that should be of interest to those who are new to the field of drug policy, as well as those who have been working in the trenches. It begins with an overview of problems and policies related to illegal drugs in the United States, including the nonmedical use of prescription drugs. It then discusses the efficacy of U.S. drug policies and programs, including long-standing issues that deserve additional attention. Next, the paper lists the major funders of research and analysis in the area and describes their priorities. By highlighting the issues that receive most of the funding, this discussion identifies where gaps remain. Comparing these needs, old and new, to the current funding patterns suggests eight opportunities to improve understanding of drug problems and drug policies in the United States: (1) sponsor young scholars and strengthen the infrastructure of the field, (2) accelerate the diffusion of good ideas and reliable information to decisionmakers, (3) replicate and evaluate cutting-edge programs in an expedited fashion, (4) support nonpartisan research on marijuana policy, (5) investigate ways to reduce drug-related violence in Mexico and Central America, (6) improve understanding of the markets for diverted pharmaceuticals, (7) help build and sustain comprehensive community prevention efforts, and (8) develop more sensible sentencing policies that reduce the excessive levels of incarceration for drug offenses and address the extreme racial disparities. The document offers some specific suggestions for researchers and potential research funders in each of the eight areas.
Identifying Barriers to Diversity in Law Enforcement Agencies
Identifying Barriers to Diversity in Law Enforcement Agencies
The authors describe how law enforcement agencies can use barrier analysis, a method of assessment aimed at identifying potential obstacles to obtaining resources or participating in a program, to better understand and address the challenge of creating diversity among their personnel. They examine key points in the career lifecycle, such as recruitment, hiring, promotion, and retention practices, to determine where women and racial/ethnic minorities face obstacles that might account for less-than-proportionate representation among applicants, hires, and senior leadership. They describe the barrier analysis process, illustrate how it can help law enforcement agencies increase the diversity of their workforce, and present case studies featuring police departments that have used barrier analysis.
Health and wellbeing at work in the United Kingdom
Health and wellbeing at work in the United Kingdom
In 2009, the Work Foundation led a partnership with RAND Europe and Aston Business School undertaking the research and analysis to support the Boorman review. RAND Europe led the study on whether health workplace interventions could be useful to mitigate health risk factors and to reduce the work-related costs associated with poor health and wellbeing in British workplaces and the NHS in England. This report, prepared for the Department of Health, presents the main findings of the research.
Should the Increase in Military Pay Be Slowed?
Should the Increase in Military Pay Be Slowed?
Source: RAND Corporation
Conditions are favorable for slowing the increase in military pay. Recruiting and retention are in excellent shape, and manpower requirements are planned to decrease. Basic pay grew 45 percent from 2000 to 2011, more than the Employment Cost Index (ECI) (up 33 percent) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) (up 31 percent). Regular military compensation (RMC) grew even more. After adjusting for inflation, RMC grew an average of 40 percent for enlisted members and 25 percent for officers. RMC growth was higher because of increases in the basic allowance for housing. RMC is above the benchmark of 70th percentile of civilian pay and stands at the 80th percentile or higher for enlisted personnel and officers with a bachelor’s degree and the 75th percentile for officers with more than a bachelor’s. The authors discuss several approaches to slowing the rate of increase in military pay: (1) A one-time increase in basic pay set at half a percentage point below the ECI, (2) a one-year freeze in basic pay, and (3) a series of below-ECI increases, such as ECI minus half a percentage point for four years. The first option has lower cost savings, leaves open possible further action, yet may create more uncertainty about future pay changes. The second and third options provide several times more cost savings but may be politically more costly.
Improving School Leadership Through Support, Evaluation, and Incentives: The Pittsburgh Principal Incentive Program
In 2007, the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) received funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) program to implement the Pittsburgh Urban Leadership System for Excellence (PULSE), a set of reforms designed to improve the quality of school leadership throughout the district. A major component of PULSE is the Pittsburgh Principal Incentive Program (PPIP), a system of support, performance-based evaluation, and compensation with two major components: (1) an annual opportunity for a permanent salary increase of up to $2,000 based primarily on principals’ performance on a rubric that is administered by assistant superintendents and that measures practices in several areas and (2) an annual bonus of up to $10,000 based primarily on student achievement growth. The district also offered bonuses to principals who took positions in high-need schools. PPIP provided principals with several forms of support. This report examines implementation and outcomes from school years 2007–2008 through 2010–2011, with a focus on understanding how principals and other school staff have responded to the reforms, and on documenting the student achievement outcomes that accompanied program implementation.
India’s and Pakistan’s Strategies in Afghanistan: Implications for the United States and the Region
India’s and Pakistan’s Strategies in Afghanistan: Implications for the United States and the Region
Source: RAND Corporation
India and Pakistan have very different visions for Afghanistan, and they seek to advance highly disparate interests through their respective engagements in the country. Pakistan views Afghanistan primarily as an environment in which to pursue its rivalry with India. India pursues domestic priorities (such as reining in anti-Indian terrorism, accessing Central Asian energy resources, and increasing trade) that require Afghanistan to experience stability and economic growth. Thus, whereas Pakistan seeks to fashion an Afghan state that would detract from regional security, India would enhance Afghanistan’s stability, security, economic growth, and regional integration. Afghanistan would welcome greater involvement from India, though it will need to accommodate the interests of multiple other external powers as well. India has a range of options for engaging Afghanistan, from continuing current activities to increasing economic and commercial ties, deploying forces to protect Indian facilities, continuing or expanding training for Afghan forces, or deploying combat troops for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions. To avoid antagonizing Pakistan, India is likely to increase economic and commercial engagement while maintaining, or perhaps augmenting, military training, though it will continue to conduct such training inside India. Increased Indian engagement in Afghanistan, particularly enhanced Indian assistance to Afghan security forces, will advance long-term U.S. objectives in central and south Asia. As the United States prepares to withdraw its combat forces from Afghanistan in 2014, it should therefore encourage India to fill the potential vacuum by adopting an increasingly assertive political, economic, and security strategy that includes increased security assistance.
