Defense ARJ executive editor.

Welcome once again to the Defense Acquisition Review Journal (Defense ARJ). Our theme for this edition focuses on the issue of Communities of Practice (CoPs) and the way communities of people with your expertise can share and exchange information. As you know, knowledge management and the sharing of information is a necessity in today's complex world. To help meet this need, the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) undertook a major initiative in this area some time ago, and now the current CoPs within the Department of Defense (DoD) can be viewed on the Acquisition Community Connection web site at https://acc.dau.mil. I would encourage you to explore and read through the articles posted on the site because I am confident that you will see something that will be of interest to you.

Another way to share information with the Defense Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (AT&L) communities is through the distribution of this two-part edition of the Defense ARJ. The first part deals specifically with the issue of CoPs and items of interest in establishing and maintaining these communities, and our featured author is John Hickok, He is a forward thinker in knowledge sharing and knowledge management and dedicates his time to establishing user-friendly access to the mountain of information available within DoD. His article, entitled, "Knowledge Sharing, Communities of Practice, and Learning Asset Integration--DAU's Major Initiatives," describes knowledge management as a major enabler of personal learning and how it improves job performance. Hickok also discusses some new initiatives in an area called Learning Asset Integration and Workflow Learning, which will leverage and enhance knowledge management in the future.

The following three articles discuss different aspects of CoPs. Jill Garcia and Michael Dorohovich's article entitled, "The Truth about Building and Maintaining Successful Communities of Practice," provides a prescription for establishing a successful community and includes lessons learned in maintaining a viable entity. Noel Dickover's paper on "Supporting Communities of Interest in a Net-Centric Investment Environment," describes how net-centric acquisition business communities can be employed to achieve information superiority for the warfighter. George "Tony" Perino's article with the title, "Toward More Innovative Program Management," considers the psychological motivation to embrace creative problem-solving. In this context, the concept of CoPs as a means to share and gather information is explored.

The second part of the edition pertains to a set of research articles that is not specific to any one area of CoPs, but could form the basis of a research discussion in the Acquisition Research Community of Practice (ARCOP). The ARCOP was established to capture acquisition research thrusts that are not specific with any particular theme, but are valuable to the acquisition community. As a follow-on capability to the Defense Systems Management College's Research on Ongoing Acquisition Research (ROAR)--a closed system that captured acquisition research in several phases--the ARCOP is located under Special Interest Areas at https://acc.dau.mil and is designed as an open invitation for acquisition researchers from government, academia, and industry to share information on research topics of interest.

Consequently, the following articles cover items of interest within a number of topic areas; and James Garner, Mark Bundy, Albert Pomey, and Walter Roy lead this section with "Tank Gun Barrel Reshaping--Concept to Implementation" and provide lessons learned in a laboratory environment from discovering to implementing a new process. Katherine Weber and Michael Huckeby share their experience in "Maintaining a Viable Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC)" in the day-to-day management of a shared-in-savings approach to acquisition. Robert Graham provides a primer for documenting effective technical evaluation in his article entitled, "An Introduction to Government Technical Evaluations--A Contracting Officer's Perspective," while Michael Boudreau and Brad Naegle's "Total Ownership Cost (TOC) Considerations in Key Performance Parameters and Beyond," addresses incentives and environmental conditions that can affect the implementation of TOC.

In summary, this edition was designed to open your mind to the possibility of membership in and use of CoPs. These communities, along with electronic versions of publications such as the DAU Press' Defense AT&L magazine will probably become the information centers of the future. Speaking of the future, planned editions of this journal for 2005 include: "System-of-Systems Acquisition," slated for April; "Transformation and Leadership," for publishing in August; and "Systems Engineering Best and Worst Practices," finishes up the print year in December 2005. Also, be on the lookout for topics such as "Technology Transition and Implications" in future editions. If you are doing research in any of these areas and would like to submit an article, please contact Norene Taylor, managing editor, Defense ARJ at [e-mail]. Similarly, if you are interested in being a peer reviewer in any of these areas, we would like to hear from you. If not, consider joining us in the ARCOP by either sharing your research activities (provide an abstract) and/or start by posting a question of interest on the discussion board. Either way, we look forward to heating from you, and we remain committed to addressing topics regarding acquisition research that is of importance and adds value to what you do as members of the acquisition workforce.