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The Configuration and Control System (CCS) is the underlying framework for the Expedition System. From the developer's perspective, it provides a suite of tools that can be used to build complex applications by specifying tasks, subtasks, and prerequisites among them. The complex application for Expedition is developing a machine translation system by combining resident knowledge, knowledge elicited from an information and, optionally, knowledge imported from outside sources (e.g., an on-line source-language lexicon). CCS is written as a Java Servlet and runs on both Unix and Windows machines.

From the user's perspective, CCS provides a simple and consistent means of navigating through a complex series of tasks and diverse applications.

The navigation aspect of CCS is similiar to that of tax programs such as MacinTax or TurboTax. Preparing a tax return is a complex task that can be broken down into several levels of subtasks. The task program keeps track of the intricate dependencies that exist among tasks (If line 52 of the worksheet is greater than line 35, enter the amount from line 5 of Schedule D). The tax program handles these dependencies behind the scenes, just as CCS handles the creation of a machine translation system behind the scenes.