So here is a nerd's perspective on this - The reality is that in most Civil Military data, we can track on numbers and relatively standard data. For instance, we can count hospital beds by gender, and see if we can remedy imbalances in light of the populace. However, for many of the softer skills, like the KLE, we saw that units were trying to track on the less important with more emphasis on what was important - For example, we saw units trying to analyze the number of meetings where the local shura had armed guards, instead of figuring out who the Key Leader was and what were his motivators. However, when they did try this, a lot of the motivators were guesses (Was he agitated? Like all people talking through translators don't look agitated.)

What we saw were blown out forms with many irrelevant details, and an open text field which is usually where you saw all of the data - with all of the details ignored. My recommendation, in turn, is what I always recommend - Answer this question first - "Why are you collecting the data?"

If you have some smart analysts, then you can really do wonders, but you have to be willing to break out the details - Blobs of text generally require people to read them, but pick lists and multiple choice questions help reviewers get to the meat of the issue. The idea of a date-centric title and a narrative means that at the end of a rotation, your follow on replacement gets to read all of the files and then hope he captures the relevant info, and can ignore the stuff that was extraneous at the time.

Here is my suggested short list of key info -
- Date, Time, Location
- Purpose (Original)
- Purpose (Actual (in case the subject changes gears on you)
- Subject - Who were you talking to (Spelled as best you can of course)
- Key Points - This is mostly narrative
- Promises made with dates by who?
- Dates for follow up.

This is just a short list having found this at 10p on a Saturday night (I believe that most of this stuff was what the 82nd was using in their CJ-9 in OEF a couple of year back); I am sure I could go on. I would then find a smart guy in your unit and have them shack this up in InfoPath from Microsoft, so you can ultimately dump in to a database or even SharePoint where others can see the information and so after a rotation, you can leave it with your counterpart.

You can see from this brief list that by breaking out stuff like dates even a novice nerd can sort stuff like dates, so you can follow up without pissing the subject off. It also ensures that the next guy who is going to meet with Subject X can search for Subject X, and know that you promised him something, so when X asks for something else, you can be well informed.

You can search for my in AKO by my name and find me if you have more thoughts on this. Truth in lending - I currently work for Microsoft, but the solution I described above, I built for the 82nd before I came to work here. My comments above are not designed to sell these, but rather demonstrate a low cost solution - I can sell you a higher cost one later