NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency
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The NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) was formed in 1996 from the merging of the previous SHAPE Technical Centre (STC) in The Hague, The Netherlands (coordinates ) and the NATO Communications and Information Systems Agency (NACISA) in Brussels, Belgium. NC3A is a customer funded agency and, as a part of the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Organization (NC3O), reports to the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Board (NC3B).
The agency comprises around 800 staff, of which around 500 are located in The Hague and 300 in Brussels. Broadly speaking, the Netherlands staff are responsible for scientific research, development and experimentation, whilst the Belgian staff provide technical project management and acquisition support for NATO procurement programmes. The Agency is organised as four "production" divisions, comprising Operational Research, Communication and Information Systems, Command, Control and Sensors, and Acquisition, and one "support" division - Resources - responsible for human resources, reports section, IT support and building maintenance. Since 2004 the Agency has adopted the PRINCE2 project management approach and has organised itself in a matrix management structure, comprising around thirteen Resource Centres providing staff to twelve Integrated Project Teams (IPTs) which aim to provide programmatic coherence across the Agency. The General Manager, Mr Dag Wilhelmsen and the Deputy General Manager, Mr Marc Scheir, share their time between their offices in The Hague and Brussels. Staff are recruited directly from the 26 NATO nations, the majority holding degrees at the Masters level or above. The working language of the Agency is English.
NC3A's prime customers are Allied Command Transformation and Allied Command Operations, as well as the NATO Air Command and Control System (ACCS) Management Agency (NACMA), NATO Airborne Early Warning (NAEW) Force Command and individual NATO nations. Its annual budget is of the order of Euro 100M per year. Current major growth areas for the agency are the NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC), Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) and the Alliance Ground Surveillance and Reconnaissance (AGSR) projects. The Agency has traditionally had a strong emphasis on prototyping and currently aims to follow a spiral development model.
The agency aims to complement national research and development, rather than compete, and is primarily concerned with improving C4ISR interoperability between the nations and supporting major acquisition C4ISR programmes.
