As the nation develops its strategy to deepen and improve broader interagency coordination (i.e., coordination among the various civilian agencies as well as with the military establishment), it needs to consider, and if possible determine, whether a shared sense of community (SOC) will advance or be a critical factor in such coordination. As a first step in making such a determination, research for this paper focused on measuring the current level of the SOC between Department of Defense officers and other government agencies. The paper serves two purposes. First, it attempts to measure the SOC that military officers have regarding the three groups with which they work: Members of their own service, Members of other military services, and Members of other (nonmilitary) agencies. Second, the paper attempts to determine the relationship between military officers' SOC and their perception of the efficacy and importance of the different communities in addressing complex problems. In addition, research for this paper also attempted to determine if certain experiences affected the officers' perceptions. To measure the SOC among groups and the relation of SOC to officers' perceptions, the author queried and surveyed 208 military officers. The officers were divided into three groups, and each was asked to answer 25 questions to determine his or her SOC toward only one particular community, i.e., his or her own service, the joint military community, or the interagency community. Each officer was then asked to answer an additional seven questions on deployments and his or her interactions with and opinions of nonmilitary agencies. Lastly, each officer was asked to anonymously answer five questions to identify his/her service, years of duty, active (or not) status, gender, and rank.

"January 2011." "An interagency occasional paper published by the CGSC Foundation Press."--Cover.