1. The COG “Cookbook” Course Lesson 1 - Introduction to COG Basics
Welcome to the COG Cookbook. This is a training tool to help you get started with DMIS, and grow to more robust DMIS use. DMIS is very flexible; it adjusts to your business process and organizational structures. With that flexibility comes several options for setting up and using DMIS.
This is NOT a cookbook that tells you exactly what to do for each step in your DMIS adoption. Rather, it is a series of recipes that prompt you to consider your options for setting up DMIS.
Early DMIS adopters have learned a great deal about planning and implementing it. This COG Cookbook is mostly derived from the experiences of your colleagues through the United States as they “rolled out” DMIS in their jurisdictions.
We recommend you print out this course material as “Notes Pages.” That way, you can read along while you view the slides in Slide Show mode. You could also 3-hole punch the Notes Pages, place them in a binder, and keep it as a handy DMIS desk reference.
Suggestions for establishing Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS) Collaborative Operations Groups (COGs)

2. Different Ways to Collaborate COG Administrator Responsibilities
Topic Outline
Training objectives
What is a COG?
How do COGs work?
Different Ways to Collaborate
COG Administrator Responsibilities
The Approach
We will follow this outline in this lesson.

3. Understand considerations and actions necessary to implement DMIS
Training Objectives
Understand considerations and actions necessary to implement DMIS
Be able to plan a course of action for DMIS implementation in your own jurisdiction
Be prepared to expand DMIS utilization to include multiple jurisdictions
DMIS is a configurable set of tools that facilitates information sharing throughout the professional emergency management community. In order to realize DMIS benefits, local DMIS Administrators and Operators need to understand how DMIS works and select its configuration options in order to get the best from it. When you have completed this “COG Cookbook” training segment, and the actions we suggest, DMIS will be up and running throughout your community.
DMIS use just doesn’t magically happen when you load the software on computers. As with any new tool introduced into the public safety community, it needs to be understood, integrated into local standard operating procedures, exercised, and used in “real world” situations.

4. What is a COG? The DMIS Collaborative Operations Group
Response organizations working on the same information, even if the people are not in the same room.
Collaborative View
At first, just think of a COG as a group of people working together. It’s a “community of interest”.
Then, imagine those people working on the same report, request, or map together, even if they are geographically distributed.
With DMIS, a personal computer, a modem, and a telephone line, your emergency responders can do just that. Inside a COG, members can see the data quickly, as soon as any member enters and saves it. This is called the Collaborative View because it allows COG members to “work together apart” to coordinate information.
Local SOPs define your local COG configuration and policies

5. Helps Organizations to…
How Do COG’s Work
Helps Organizations to…
Coordinate actions
Communicate quickly
Share information within and across organizations
Create a Common operating picture in a common electronic “Work Space”
Enhance incident reporting
A DMIS Collaborative Operations Group (COG) is a virtual consequence management organization consisting of a set of DMIS Operators who need to coordinate actions, communicate, and exchange information in a collaborative environment. Because so many organizations are responsible for preparing, responding, and recovering from emergency incidents (ranging from relatively routine incidents to natural disasters to major terrorist incidents), a COG can consist of any number of operators from multiple organizations who need to work together to respond to an incident.
Examples of organizations that may constitute a COG include an entire state or county Emergency Management (EM) Office, divisions of an EM Organization, local fire departments, federal agencies, military units, a public or private consulting organization that participates in Consequence Management, a single individual, or any combination of these (or similar entities) as necessary to maintain the desired level of collaboration. Also, individuals can be members of multiple COGs. DMIS functionality, exercised through COGs, supports and supplements existing emergency management organizations, relationships, policies, and procedures.
You will have to look closely at your SOPs to decide how DMIS can best work and establish your COG based on the results. An organization’s size, complexity, and processes will influence the kind of COG structure that is best for your environment.
Key aspects of your job as a local DMI-Services Administrator will be to define COG structure and assign Operators to COGs.

6. Different Ways to Collaborate
Internal Collaboration
Create, Update, Edit and Share Information within your organization
External Collaboration
Post information to any external COG(S) of your choosing
Receive information from other COG(S)
Use Messenger to communicate outside your COG
Provide external users with “Guest Accounts”
Inside your own COG, operators with create, update, and view privileges to an application can see each others entries in “near real time.” When an operator enters data and “refreshes” the view via the Save function, other operators can see and respond to the entry right away.
To share that information with someone in another COG, however, the Post function must be used. When a set of information is posted, the operator with release authority from the sending COG defines what COGs may see the information, and to some extent, what they can do with it.
When you receive information from another COG, you can look at it and comment on it using a chat function, but you can’t change what the sender posted. Additionally, you can only forward information received from a COG to yet another COG if the original COG grants permissions to do so. DMIS ensures the “owner” of information is in full control of its distribution and re-use.

7. COG Administrator Responsibilities “Leading the Way”
The local DMIS Administrator implements and maintains the COG
Installs the DMIS software
Establishes/maintains DMIS Operator accounts
Advises decision makers
Facilitates COG operations
Keeps local operators informed of changes and updates
The COG Administrator is key to the success of your organization’s “DMIS squad.” He is the central person who brings your COG to life and keeps it working.
The COG Administrator is the first to learn the features and flexibility of DMIS in enough detail to advise your decision makers.
The Administrator registers your COG (and himself / herself as its administrator) with DMIS, and assists in the configuration of the COG(s) that best suit the structure of your organization.
The COG Administrator is generally the one who installs DMIS on Operators’ machines.
The Administrator works with Operators to establish their user accounts and to assign them the privileges necessary to do their jobs.
As the first to learn about DMIS characteristics, the COG Administrator can also expect to be the local “go-to” person for answering operators’ questions and providing basic trouble shooting.

8. A Three-Phase Approach
Lesson 1 - Crawl
A “cookbook recipe” for your first COG
Lesson 2 – Walk
COG planning considerations
Lesson 3 – Run - Large Scale Rollouts
Planning Considerations for State and Regional DMIS Adoption
We recommend a three-phase process to rolling out DMIS in a jurisdiction. Depending on your individual situation you may or may not need to implement all of the phases. The key is to implement phase one to see how DMIS can enhance your response practices, then decide if you want to move on to a more robust DMIS implementation. Please proceed to COG Cookbook course Part 1.

9. End of the COG Cookbook Course Introduction to COG Basics
This concludes the Introduction to COG Basics Lesson.