As of May 23, 2011 the CCO Portal site no longer requires member log-in for most content. All of the information once contained at this site, and more, is now available at CCOPortal.org. The staff at CCO hope the new user friendly website offers a more effective way to learn about past and current complex operations. You should check it out!
The Center for Complex Operations (CCO)
The CCO is designed to link U.S. Government education and training institutions, including related centers of excellence, lessons learned programs, and academia, to foster unity of effort in stability operations, counterinsurgency, and irregular warfare – collectively called “complex operations.” The Department of Defense, with support from the State Department and USAID, established the Center for Complex Operations (CCO) as an innovative interagency partnership. Recognizing that unity of effort across disparate government agencies, and across DoD components, requires shared intellectual and decision-making frameworks, the CCO will connect education and training programs across the government to foster a ‘whole of government’ understanding, assessment and approach to complex operations.
The CCO was specifically established to:
- Serve as an information clearing-house and knowledge manager for complex operations training and education, acting as a central repository for information on areas such as training and curricula, training and education provider institutions, complex operations events, and subject matter experts.
- Develop a complex operations training and education ‘community of practice’ to catalyze innovation and development of new knowledge, connect members for networking, share existing knowledge, and cultivate foundations of trust and habits of collaboration across the community;
- Serve as a feedback and information conduit to OSD and broader USG policy leadership to support guidance and problem solving across the community of practice;
- Enable more effective networking, coordination and synchronization to support the preparation of Department of Defense and other U.S. Government personnel for complex operations;
- Support lessons learned processes and best practices compilation in the area of complex operations; and
- Identify education and training gaps of the Department of Defense and other federal departments and agencies and facilitate efforts to fill those gaps.
The CCO grew out of three separate but conceptually related initiatives. In the Department of Defense, DoD Directive 3000.05 Military Support to Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction called for the establishment of a Center of Excellence for Stability Operations. Likewise, the Irregular Warfare Roadmap from the Quadrennial Defense Review asked DoD to develop a similar center for IW. Meanwhile the State-DoD Interagency Counter-insurgency initiative sought to establish a Center of Excellence for Interagency Counter-insurgency. Rather than creating three new, duplicative centers, interagency stakeholders decided that a consortium, leveraging existing institutions, would be more effective and efficient. The CCO is also supportive and complimentary to the Department of State Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization led NSPD-44 initiatives.
