General guidance for the Cover Page includes:

- Sponsoring Organization: The organization which authorized the submittal of the IS-ICD for review and validation. A sponsor GO/FO must endorse new IS-ICDs, and modifications to validated IS-ICDs. 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.

- Signature Authority: The Signature Authority is usually the Service/Agency’s requirements validation authority or designee, and is generally annotated as an office rather than individual.

- Primary and secondary points-of-contact for the IS-ICD: Verify and denote the Requirements Management Certification Training (RMCT) levels for the points-of-contact.

- Reference the JCIDS Manual, Enclosure D.

- Proposed Validation Authority: The proposed validation authority may be the same as the Sponsoring Organization or it might be the Joint Capabilities Board (JCB) or Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) if the sponsor believes that the IS-ICD contains joint equities. This can be changed by the Joint Staff Gatekeeper during staffing.

- 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 Joint Staffing Designator (JSD): There are three JSDs:

- JROC Interest: The JROC is the validation authority for JROC Interest documents.

- Joint Capabilities Board (JCB) Interest: The JCB is the validation authority for JCB Interest documents, except for United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) or United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) capability requirements documents that have their own Independent Validation Authority for JCB Interest and below documents.

- Joint Information: If the Sponsor believes that there are no joint equities within the document, then the Sponsor organization will have independent validation authority for Joint Information documents.

- Note: Reference Appendix C to Enclosure A, section 3.2.3.6, JCIDS Manual for detailed descriptions of each JSD.