Army Knowledge Online: Expansion and Vision
ARMY WEB PORTAL STEPS FORWARD TO AID EMERGENCY RESPONDERS AND WARFIGHTERS IN ACTION.
Army Knowledge Online, the Army’s Web portal, is expanding and increasing functionalities to match the Army’s growing appetite for collaboration and information sharing. Expanding from 97,000 users in October 2000 to its present level of more than 1.8 million account holders, AKO provides premier classified and unclassified enterprise functions, tools and services to the warfighter, institutional and greater Army community.
“Emerging technologies need champions,” according to former Army Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer. Dubbed the “father of AKO,” Reimer noted that once leaders started using technology, they would find ways to take it far beyond anything he could imagine.
That is exactly what has happened. Army users are embracing AKO services in record numbers. On March 17, a new login record was set with 754,943 logins in one day. This figure represented use by 325,112 separate account holders in a 24-hour period.
Recent upgrades to the portal—including improved navigation and a SIPRNet upgrade—have increased its value to users. Colonel Taylor Chasteen, project director for AKO, is focused on delivery of portal services to Army personnel in the field.
“Relevant to the warfighter,” Chasteen said, “AKO collects, processes, manages and disseminates vast amounts of data. The synthesis of data into knowledge allows commanders the ability to effectively lead during dynamic operations in any environment, at any location—on land, in the air or at sea. Commanders, planners, logisticians and other authorized users can transmit data over AKO securely to collaborate on formatted information regardless of location.”
RELEVANT AND PROACTIVE
Several natural disasters this past year showed the Army portal’s versatility in responding to myriad needs. When Hurricane Katrina devastated the southern U.S. coast, AKO established an online Hurricane Information Center in immediate response to the Army’s need for access to multiple information resources in one central location.
The page on the portal provided a “one-stop shopping center” for AKO account holders to access information needs related to disaster recovery. Links to partnering organizations such as FEMA, American Red Cross, National Hurricane Center, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness were provided for users. There were also many links to locate and contact displaced family members, such as Katrina People Search and the National Next of Kin Registry.
On the day that Hurricane Katrina caused the most serious damage, the AKO staff was able to establish the center in one day and make it available to its customers. With the AKO portal, Army organizations could then store files that units might need to access on the road or want to share with other AKO users.
The functionalities of knowledge management included uploading, downloading and sharing files; versioning files and sending notifications to users about files; and creating, managing and subscribing to knowledge centers that held information on particular subjects, events or operations.
These functionalities allowed users to create a controlled area within the portal for sharing information that is accessible only to designated members. Units deployed to the hurricane site for disaster recovery were then able to develop sites with information that was specific to their organization and protect any information they did not wish to share with or be viewed by other AKO users.
The Hurricane Information Center initiative achieved great benefits for the Army. Use of the center via a single sign-on enterprise system enabled customers to obtain information and reassurance by having access to one central point of reference.
Of specific relevance to military members were internal sites specifically for Army members, such as the Military Family Locator Website, Hurricane Katrina Recommended Vaccinations for DoD Personnel Supporting Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief Operations, and toll-free numbers for service members and their families to obtain assistance or counseling services.
One notable success story was the immediate service provided to members of the Louisiana National Guard deployed in Iraq. They were able to log into their AKO account in Southwest Asia and find immediate information, including locator systems for displaced or missing family members. Moreover, family members were able to use e-mail or instant messaging in some areas to assure their deployed soldier family about their current situation. This helped relieve stress of family members and prevented distraction from the Army’s combat mission in Iraq.
Another instance of great benefit was the placement of operational documents on the portal so that units deploying to assist with recovery efforts would be able to view them upon arrival in Louisiana. Units had immediate access to evolving information about sites to go to, maps of the location and other pertinent information to aid them in disaster relief and recovery.
Information availability—the ability to rapidly update data in near real-time and quickly disseminate urgent notices or announcements—was key to support operations for Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. At one critical point during the aftermath of Katrina, there were more than 75,000 logins on one day and over 10,000 logins in one hour.
Additionally, one of the channels on the Hurricane Information Center homepage provided sites for those AKO users who wanted to assist others with hurricane recovery.
AKO FORWARD
AKO Forward is the next logical step in deploying secure, validated Army data and services to the soldier. This concept pushes selected services and assets to the edges, making them more robust, more available, more secure and more useful to the warfighter.
AKO Forward will greatly increase the speed of delivery by reducing the distance and number of network devices between origin and destination. AKO services will become immediate and reliable to all soldiers and units. This reliability will remove the need for unit deployments of AKO-like services such as e-mail, IM, document repositories and portal technologies.
Army organizations will no longer need to purchase, deploy, man and sustain collaboration services, dramatically reducing total IT costs for the Army. AKO Forward sites will also reduce bandwidth utilization by keeping regionalized information flow in theater.
The full expectation for AKO Forward is a constellation of roughly four sites situated in such areas as Germany, South Korea and Southwest Asia. Actual sites will be determined by user base and user experience in distant regions. Goals for AKO Forward include having a portal with all information exactly the same at all sites, storing files with all the information the same at the master and regional levels, providing IM and Web conferencing with regional engines running IM, and maintaining regional subsets of mail stores for e-mail.
AKO Forward will be a significant step forward for the Army. The vision of secure, validated Army data and services available anywhere, anytime, from any terminal is fulfilled by AKO itself. The more important and broader vision of those capabilities being pushed forward to the warfighter, deployed on a moment’s notice, constantly replicated and optimized for performance, will be fulfilled by AKO Forward.
In addition, the advances made by AKO have not gone unnoticed by the Department of Defense. Last fall, Air Force Lieutenant General Charles E. Croom Jr., director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, announced plans to turn the AKO system into a defense-wide Web portal. ♦
