Overview
The establishment of a Secretary of the Coast Guard and an associated Secretariat presents the Service an opportunity to optimize our organizational structure, enabling a leaner, more agile, and strategically focused Headquarters element. This streamlined Headquarters will prioritize strategic planning, setting policy and doctrine, enabling operational readiness, and providing mission support to operational commanders.
Strategic Imperative O-1: Transform strategic and operational decision-making to enhance mission effectiveness.
Key Enabler O-1.1: Accelerate the Executive Decision-Making process. We will establish a Chief of Staff to streamline executive decision-making, enhance efficiency and coordination, improve integration and strategic alignment, prioritize and synchronize initiatives and actions, evaluate effectiveness, and adjust approaches. We will transfer operational and service-delivery functions out of Headquarters.
Key Enabler O-1.2: Empower decision-making at all levels. We will publish a Commander’s Intent to empower leaders with clear authority, responsibility, and accountability to drive decision-making and deliver timely outcomes. We will delegate decision-authority to the appropriate level to maximize mission impact. We will restore maximum Commanding Officer and Officer-in-Charge authority and discretion in their use of non-judicial punishment under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to improve discipline at the unit level. We will identify and eliminate redundant, unnecessary, and ineffective administrative requirements placed on our operational forces, allowing them to focus on the achievement of mission objectives…
Strategic Imperative T-1: Change how mission-critical capabilities are acquired, deployed, and maintained to accelerate continuous technology insertion to make Coast Guard operations more effective and mission support more efficient.
Key Enabler T-1.1: Drive technology change through modeling and acquisition. We will leverage Model-Based Engineering (MBE) and utilize digital models to design, analyze, and validate complex systems to enable faster engineering, improved collaboration, and higher confidence in system performance throughout the lifecycle. We will create the Coast Guard’s “Digital Thread” by establishing and implementing MBE for requirements, design, simulation, analysis, testing, and sustainment across the entire lifecycle of assets and systems. We will prioritize the redesign and remodeling of shore-based command and control facilities to deliver operational success at all classification levels. We will identify and deploy commercial-based geospatial systems combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to reduce manpower and increase the speed of operations. We will adopt, leverage, and incorporate AI into daily Coast Guard operations. We will invest in commercial cloud and platform services that lower the barrier to entry to deploy new capabilities and deliver digital twins and simulators. We will expand the ability to rapidly acquire, develop, and deploy user-centric designed software and enhance the Coast Guard’s support to the maritime industry by replacing antiquated systems (e.g., Merchant Mariner Licensing and Documentation System, Vessel Documentation System, Homeport, Ship Arrival Notification System, etc.) with modern, user-centric designed systems.
