General guidance for the Cover Page includes:

- Sponsoring Organization: The organization which authorized the submittal of the document for review and validation. A sponsor GO/FO must endorse new documents, and modifications to validated documents. The sponsoring organization is usually the Service or Agency or a Major Command of the Service, or may also be a Combatant Command or Joint Staff Organization.

- Proposed Joint Staffing Designator (JSD): When asserting a proposed JSD, you should seek to set it at the lowest level, while acknowledging that the review process may elevate it later. There are four JSDs per the JFRP Manual, but for the documents proscribed in the Manual (the CRD, JDCR, and CDR), you will likely NOT USE the Service Information designation—you will likely use one of the following:

- FCB Interest (akin to the former FCB Interest): The FCB is the validation authority for FCB Interest documents, and relate to documents where the requirement is necessary to fulfill a capability gap of more than one Service, and/or where the requirement will likely be addressed with an ACAT III (or equivalent) acquisition program.

- JCB Interest (akin to the former JCB Interest): The JCB is the validation authority for JCB Interest documents, and relate to documents where the requirement is necessary to fulfill a capability gap of more than one Service, and/or where the requirement will likely be addressed with an ACAT II (or equivalent) acquisition program. There is an exception for USSOCOM and USCYBERCOM documents that have their own independent validation authority. (See the Manual for more details.)

- JROC Interest (same as previous designation under JCIDS): The JROC is the validation authority for JROC Interest documents, and relate to documents where the requirement is necessary to fulfill a capability gap of more than one Service, and/or where the requirement will likely be addressed with an ACAT I (or equivalent) acquisition program.

- Proposed Lead FCB: Choose the FCB that you believe has the highest equity in the capability gap. If the gap applies to more than one, choose the ‘best fit,’ acknowledging that it may be shared by that FCB with other FCBs during the staffing process.

- Point(s)-of-contact for the document: The JFRP Manual required a Point of Contact for the document, but the RDW provides you an OPTIONAL space to include a secondary POC, if you have one. If not, simply skip over it and remove it from the document once you get to MS Word.

- **Note: While the JFRP Manual states that CDRs should be, “Service, solution, and cost agnostic,” it still requires you to identify a proposed MDA and Solution Sponsor. For now, this is conflicting guidance, but akin to an ICD under the JCIDS process, it requires these two data points. Acknowledging the conflict, use the following guidance to assert these two information requirements:

- Proposed Milestone Decision Authority (MDA):

- The proposed MDA should be based on the expected Acquisition Category (ACAT) of the potential materiel solution. NOTE: for new capabilities expected to be at ACAT I, it will be the Service Acquisition Executive/Component Acquisition Executive because new MDAP programs begin as ACAT 1B.

- Normally the estimate for RDT&E and Procurement costs are used to determine potential ACAT I and II. However, absent a cost estimate make a judgement based on affordability and advice from your cost subject matter expert, associated program office, and Service HQ programmers.

- Proposed Solution Sponsor: This is most likely to simply be a Service designation, but you could also propose a specific acquisition entity within a Service or a Joint PEO.