Victoria A. Greenfield

This report presents the strengths and limitations of cost-effectiveness analysis and related metrics to inform the U. S. Army about whether, when, and how to usefully employ them for capability investment decisions. The authors discuss how complexity can increase as objectives become less clear cut, ancillary benefits and unintended consequences emerge, technologies become intertwined, boundaries change, and risk and uncertainty take hold.

Researchers evaluated the impact that the U. S. Department of Homeland Security has had on meeting the goals of eliminating U. S. imports of goods made with forced labor and eliminating the use of forced labor globally. This report discusses methods of evaluating the department's impact, presents findings on efforts, and provides recommendations for strengthening enforcement.

This report presents an examination of how cyber-related risks compare with other risks to defense-industrial supply chains, including how attackers might use supply chains to wage attacks, such as through malicious code, and how supply chains might, themselves, be targets of attack, such as through disruption. It also explores the implications of the differences in risks for directions in risk assessment and mitigation and for research.

Assessing the Harms of Crime provides a firm analytical foundation for making normative decisions about criminal and related policy, taking harm—and its reduction—as a conceptual starting point and supplying the means for systematic, empirical analysis in a harm assessment framework. By exploring harm's place in legal history, theory, criminology, and related fields and by considering the relevance of harm and its reduction for both criminal policy and the governance of security, the book demonstrates the centrality of harm, including its reduction, to crime, policy, and governance. It also highlights a substantial gap in methods available to the policy community to take on harm and the challenges of developing them. Working to fill that gap, the book presents the authors' "Harm Assessment Framework," consisting of tools and a process to identify, evaluate, and rank harms and to carefully distinguish between harms that result directly from activities and those that are remote or driven at least partially by policy. The book also presents applications to complex crimes, primarily involving coca and cocaine, that show the framework's value with new, actionable insight to harm and policy. On this basis, the book argues that criminology would benefit from expanding its mission to include harm and target harm reduction and from positioning harm assessment as a core task. Lastly, it posits that systematic, empirical harm-based policy analysis can contribute positively to decisions about criminal policy and the governance of security and to advancing justice.

Policymakers have increased emphasis on national security risks deriving from globalization of weapon system supply chains. This report addresses the challenges the U. S. Air Force faces in mitigating the effects of these risks and suggests ways to improve how it addresses such risks in source selection and other decisions.

The report describes the underlying method of collaborative logic-model development and application and frames the approach in generalizable step-by-step terms, drawing from research and analysis conducted in conjunction with the Federal Voting Assistance Program. The report derives from a more-detailed report that more fully documents both the process and its results, including recommendations, guidance, and organizational change.

RAND researchers use literature reviews and stakeholder interviews to develop a preliminary logic model to help the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health s Nanotechnology Research Center assess its contributions to improving the safety and health of workers who could be affected by the production, use, reuse, or disposal of engineered nanomaterials."

This report documents the Federal Voting Assistance Program s efforts to align its strategy and operations to better serve its mission and stakeholders, and strengthen its capacity to set its own course, greet change, and communicate its role in the voting community. The report shows the potential for substantial, timely change in a highly collaborative working relationship, rooted in a systematic and analytically grounded research design."

What has the Army learned about risk from its experience using contractors in the Balkans? Is the Army getting what it needs and managing risks appropriately in its combat service support contracts? This report uses the Army's Balkans Support Contract and a continuous risk-management framework to answer these questions. On the basis of this case study, the authors conclude that the Army has been getting what it needs, though it might, at times, be bearing too much cost-related risk, and that few risks arise directly from the use of contractors. They also see a need for more training for the Army's contracting personnel to better plan, coordinate, and manage contracts.

What is the best and most cost-effective way for the Army to use contractors on the battlefield? This report shows how planners can create courses of action and assess the risks associated with them to improve how the Army uses contractors on the battlefield. It shows how to assess risks relevant to mission success, contractor safety, cost, and such other factors as administrative law and force management. It addresses risk assessment relevant to decisions that affect Army use of contractors, whether they are made inside or outside the Army.