The NATO Exercise Training, Reporting and Analysis (EXTRA) Portal recently passed a landmark 500 000th website hit; a truly notable achievement for the Alliance’s single centralized exercise and training-related information sharing platform. Developed throughout 2014 by the JALLC, the NATO EXTRA Portal was launched just 18 months ago in January 2015 with the aim of making the job of NATO exercise planners and all those involved in exercises, training, reporting and analysis much easier by providing immediate and easy access to all exercise and training-related information such as NATO Exercise Lessons Identified Action Lists (LIAL), Final Exercise Reports (FER), First Impression Reports (FIR), Exercise Specifications (EXSPEC) and Exercise Plans (EXPLAN) as well as all essential exercise planning directives and documentation.
The NATO EXTRA Portal also has a number of useful additional features such as links to other HQ web-sites, an on-line forum for the NATO EXTRA Community of Interest, and Lesson Learned Staff Officer contact lists for NATO Command Structure and NATO Force Structure Commands, HQs, Centres and other entities.
In May 2016, the NATO EXTRA Portal became an important feature of the newly established NATO Exercise Reporting and Handling of Lessons process, when it was adopted for use as the single central location for the upload and management of all NATO Exercise LIALs. Used to its full potential, the NATO EXTRA Portal will undoubtedly play a key role in the improvement of future NATO exercises and training events and contribute significantly to Alliance transformation. The NATO EXTRA Portal currently contains web-pages for 16 active and 13 archived exercises.
In the summer of 2016, ownership and management of the NATO EXTRA Portal will transition from the JALLC to Joint Force Trainer in HQ Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, who will take the lead in ensuring the Portal’s true potential is maximised in the future.
Would you like to read more about the NATO EXTRA Portal? A full JALLC Report detailing the development and testing of the EXTRA Portal as well as an EXTRA Portal User Manual can be found in the NATO Lessons Learned Portal on the NS WAN. Or to read the unclassified NATO EXTRA Portal brochure.