Army Knowledge Online
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Army Knowledge Online (AKO) provides corporate intranet services to the United States Army, and provides the US Army's single enterprise web portal [1]. AKO provides the Army enterprise with email, directory services, portal, single sign on, blogs, file storage, instant messenger and chat. All members of the Active Duty, National Guard, Reserves, DA Civilian and select contractor workforce have an account which grants access to Army web assets, tools and services worldwide. In addition, retirees and family members are also entitled to accounts. All users can build pages, create file storage areas, and create and participate in discussion on the portal. Users can build custom access control lists for each piece of content they own to determine the audience allowed to see or use their content. AKO is a driving factor in the ongoing transformation of the US Army into the agile, network based force that is required for today's conflicts [1]. As of this writing, AKO has 2.2 million registered users, and supports over 350K users logging in up to a million times a day as well as receiving and delivering on average 12 million emails daily.
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[edit] History and development
AKO was established in the late 1990s as an experimental outgrowth of a project headed by then-LTC Nick Justice in GOMO.[citation needed] This early project led to A2OL (Americas Army Online), but legal concerns over this name and the parallelism to other commercial vendors caused the Army Project team to seek a new name. Two very early major Project Officers for AKO were MAJ Charlie Wells and MAJ David Bailey.[citation needed] Each was charged to develop, research and expand the portal to benefit Army Users Worldwide and to grow the system from its less than auspicious roots. Major Wells worked on establishing the NIPRNet (unclassified) version and Major Bailey joined the project later to establish and experiment with SIPRNet or Classified versions.[2][citation needed] Major Bailey also is sometimes credited with bringing the baselines for both projects together and with fashioning a "leader's dashboard" concept that to date has only been partially realized.[3][citation needed] The project has run through various incarnations and later project leaders, but still the fundamentals of this system apply...Centralized name spacing of email (with webmail access), white pages, unification of data conduits, central capability of authentication and repudiation of credentials and the ability to remotely access content.
[edit] User
Army Knowledge Online (AKO) is to let all Army personnel, both soldiers and civilian contractors, access information whenever and wherever necessary [4].
Since August 2001, all Department of Army civilians have to establish an e-mail account with Army Knowledge Online. By October 1st, 2001, all active duty, reserves, and national guard soldiers are required to registered an account on AKO. There are 2 different types of accounts on Army Knowledge Online, a full account and a guest account. Authorized full accounts include the following:
- Active Army
- DA Civilian
- Army Reserves
- Retired
- Army Retired
- Future Soldiers
- Medical Retired
- NAF Civilian
- National Guard
- ROTC Cadets (MS III and MS IV)
- National Guard
- Retired
- U.S. Military Academy Cadets
These accounts do not required any sponsorship to register. Unlike a full account, guest accounts require an Army sponsor with an authorized full account. Guest accounts include the following:
- Army Volunteer
- Incoming Future Soldier
- Contractor
- Local National Employee
- DoD Civilian
- Medical Discharge
- Family Member of Full AKO Member
- ROTC Cadets (MS I and II)
- Federal Civilian Agencies
- US Air Forces
- Foreign Officer (attached to U.S Army)
- US Coast Guard
- Homeland Security
- US Marine Corps
- Incoming DA Civilian
- US Navy
- Military Transition
[edit] Function & Feature
The first and foremost important function of Army Knowledge Online is its e-mail. Through this, information can pass through the chain of command much faster and more efficient than before [1].
Another important function of Army Knowledge Online is the online storage of soldiers' records. Before Army Knowledge Online, all military records were stored through in paper files storage system. Now, soldiers can look up their personal records at the tip of their fingers. They will be able to view and update their personnel data on the Web. This can be done at [IPERMS]http://iperms.army.mil [1].
Other functions have different focus.
Training function allows soldiers and DA (Department of Army) civilians to access Army online education such as Army e-learning Program, Army Learning Management System, Army Corresondence Course Program, Army transcript, US Army Reserve Virtual University, etc. These learning programs allow soldiers and DA civilians opportunities to enrich their educations, from business courses to Rosetta Stone language programs, all of which are free of charges. These courses can help soldiers with promotion points, and also later be tranferred into college credits.
Finance function allows soldiers to access their financial records, including Leave and Earning Statement, Housing allowances, Food allowances, etc.
Medical function has soldiers medical records, including DNA, past physical exam, and status of deployment readiness.
There are many other functions such as legal, travel, benefits, family, forms, readiness, and references. Each has its own functionality, "allows the Army to operate more efficiently" [1].
[edit] Success
While some features seem unremarkable in today's world, this project was the first, largest and most pervasive of the military's ventures into the web portal space and is largely one of the most successful projects. This project can be credited with providing highly mobile Army users with non-transient email addresses, an ability to allow many web based products to share authentication schema, and with pushing the envelope on disaster recovery planning.
[edit] Help desk
Assistance for the portal is available at https://help.us.army.mil and offers self help as well as Live Chat assistance [5]
This portal methodology has been since selected as a key pillar of Defense Knowledge Online.
Related Projects: Army Knowledge Online - SIPRNet, Army Home Page
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e [news from Ft.McCoy]http://www.mccoy.army.mil/vtriad_online/09142001/AKO.htm
- ^ AKO and AKO-S status briefings (various) 1999/2000, Ms. Miriam Browning, USA VCSA GEN Keane; AKO steering Committee notes and memoranda
- ^ Project baseline notes, Dec 2000; AKO-S status and concept briefing, GEN Keane, OCT 2000
- ^ Ft. Lee's AKO document
- ^ Army Knowledge Online FAQ
