VZCZCXRO0071
RR RUEHAST RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHLA RUEHMRE RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHNO #0178/01 0791112
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 201112Z MAR 07
FM USMISSION USNATO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0638
INFO RUCNCFE/CONVENTIONAL ARMED FORCES IN EUROPE COLLECTIVE
RUCNOSC/OSCE COLLECTIVE
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHDC
RUEAADN/DTRA DULLES WASHDC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RUESDT/DTRA-OSES DARMSTADT GE
RUEASWA/DTRALO CHIEVRES AB BE
RHMFISS/CDR USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE
RHMFIUU/CDR USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 USNATO 000178 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL PARM KCFE NATO OSCE
SUBJECT: DATA MANAGEMENT EXPERTS GROUP MEETING, MARCH 8, 
2007 
 
¶1. (U) Summary: The Data Management Expert Group (DMEG) met 
on March 8, 2007.  Italy, Spain, and Romania introduced new 
representatives, and the Chair reported on staff activity 
since the January meeting.  After reviewing the status of the 
NCFS and VERITY XXI for the current CFE, the group focused on 
a training session (20-22 June) just after the June DMEG. The 
training will cover the VERITY Mapping Tool, Off-line 
Inspection Component (OIC), and the VERITY Announcements 
Module.  The sessions will provide both an overview of the 
module and practical exercises for users.  The next meeting 
is June 19, 2007 at 1400.  End Summary. 
 
¶2. (U) At the March 8, 2007, meeting of the Data Management 
Experts Group (DMEG), the Chair (Metin Paksoy) reported on 
staff activity since the last DMEG in January.  The Staff has 
isolated the VERITY Chart-printing software development 
environment and provided it to Computing Technologies, 
Inc.(COTS), the U.S. developer of the OSCE Automated Data 
Systems (ADS) to aid in reconciliation of VERITY 
chart-printing software and the ADS.  The staff also has 
loaded into VERITY the 2007 CFE exchange data and created the 
2007 Notified Current Force Structure (NCFS) dataset.  They 
have loaded into VERITY the inspection reports received from 
Nations and automatically loaded the notifications received 
via the OSCE Network. 
 
¶3. (U) In discussion regarding the NCFS, Belgium reported a 
missing notification dated 2 January 2007.  Paksoy indicated 
that notifications coming before the creation of the 2007 
dataset in VERITY, had been applied to the 2006 datasets.  He 
said that the staff would scrub and correct any such gaps for 
early 2007.  The UK representative also said that a new 
update for the UK notification compilations should be 
expected in the next few weeks. 
 
¶4. (U) The ACCS staff provided the usual set of inspection 
reports held in VERITY and those missing from VERITY.  After 
reviewing these reports, no national representative raised 
any outstanding issue. 
 
¶5. (U) In discussion of VERITY XXI for the current CFE 
Treaty, John Thomas reported that he routinely tests the 
system compatibility as upgrades of the component software 
become available.  He noted that an unexpected impact on 
VERITY of the upgraded .net framework has been to limit user 
use of certain special characters.  Mr. Thomas also reviewed 
the status of problems identified during the January Data 
Assembly concerning the VERITY chart-printing.  The 
development of the capability to print chart footnotes is 
being implemented.  Other problems with the printing of long 
names on Chart VI and with inaccuracy in the identification 
of reduction sites on Chart IIIB have been resolved.  The 
Spanish request for functionality to change the header on an 
unnumbered Chart IIIB will require discussion at the CCB in 
Vienna.  Norway reported a problem that when a user logged 
off the Mail module of VERITY, it closed the browser and 
required the user to log on again.  John Thomas will look 
into the problem and suggested that it may be related to use 
of a version of Internet Explorer that is earlier than 7.0. 
ACCS is undertaking development of an alternative to PROBE, 
the current database for bug reports, and he promised to 
provide a timeline for that application at the June DMEG. 
 
¶6. (U) A status report of the Off-line Inspection Component 
(OIC) stated that a downloadable NCFS update file for the OIC 
had been distributed via VERITY.  Individual nations seemed 
to have been able to make the OIC update smoothly. 
 
¶7. (U) The most interesting discussion of the meeting was 
about the Way Ahead for the Current VERITY XXI.  Topics for a 
proposed training session in the wake of the June DMEG were 
selected.  The session schedule will be as follows: Day 1 
(Wednesday) the VERITY Mapping Tool, Day 2 (Thursday) the 
OIC, Day 3 (Friday-half day) the Announcements Module. The 
sessions will include both an overview of the module of 
interest and hands-on exercises based on concrete scenarios. 
 
¶8. (U) Regarding the status of the Adapted CFE (A-CFE), 
Paksoy reported little political progress can be expected in 
the near term due to problems with fulfillment of the 
Istanbul Commitments.  Therefore, this was not the right time 
for the DMEG to undertake further work on the A-CFE module of 
 
USNATO 00000178  002 OF 002 
 
 
VERITY. 
 
¶9. (U) Use of the PEM-HEART software for provision of Mission 
Reports by Nations has been held up by delays in the delivery 
of equipment needed to set-up the system in ACCS.  This 
equipment is now coming in and the ACCS system should be up 
in the near future. 
 
¶10. (U) The final item was Any Other Business and the only 
issue was a question from Italy asking what the impact of 
VISTA will be on VERITY and its components.  John Thomas and 
Metin Paksoy both indicated that they prefer to take a "wait 
and see" approach before undertaking real tests for 
compatibility between VERITY and Microsoft VISTA. 
 
11.(U) The next meeting will be Tuesday, June 19, at 1400. It 
will be followed by the training session on June 20-22, 2007. 
NULAND