Using the defined activities as a basis, Information Exchange Requirements (IERs) express the relationship across the three basic entities of an operational architecture, such as activities, operational elements, and information flow, with a focus on the specific aspects of the information flow.

IERs identify who exchanges what information with whom, why the information is necessary, and in what manner. IERs identify the elements of war fighter information used in support of a particular activity and between any two activities. The node of the producing operational element and the node of the consuming operational element are identified. Relevant attributes of the exchange are noted. The specific attributes included are dependent on the objectives of the specific architecture effort, but may include the information media, such as data, voice, and video, quality, such as frequency, timeliness, and security, and quantity, such as volume and speed. Particular capabilities such as security level of communications may also be captured for each exchange. The emphasis in this product is on the logical and operational characteristics of the information, such as what information is needed by whom, from whom, and when.

When creating an OV-03 report, note exactly where the information is sourced from. The following are the requirements needed in order to create an OV-03 Information Exchange Matrix report properly.

All other columns in the generated report are sourced from properties of the Information Exchange referenced from the logical flow.

The report opens as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.