10/22/08 10:24 am ET
Army Knowledge Online, one of government's first knowledge portals and Web 2.0 projects (years before the term Web 2.0 was coined), plans to announce next week that the site will reach a major milestone: the 1 billionth log on. The Army created AKO in 1998, and at the time Miriam Browning, then the director of information management in the Army's office of chief information officer, told Federal Computer Week that the site leverages the Army's "intellectual capital in a dynamic and collaborative way using the principles of knowledge management and Internet/intranet technologies. Our goal with AKO is to enable the Army to achieve a strategic advantage in the networked, knowledge-based global community of the 21st century." In 2001, AKO offered soldiers a proprietary and secure instant messaging application.
According to an email Appian Corp., which built the AKO portal, sent out on Tuesday, the 1 billionth log on to the system "is a historic milestone. We're not aware that any other portal has ever hit the one billion mark - or even come close. To put it in perspective, if a typical user session is 12 minutes, AKO has been used for more than 22,000 man years. That's as if 100 soldiers had sat down after George Washington's victory at Yorktown (1781) and used the system nonstop until the present day."
COMMENTS
Retirees have access to AKO today and every day. There are things that we as retirees cannot access or have the reason to access.
Sorry that LTC Ferguson has chosen to not use AKO. With over 1 billion logins - the FORCE is using it for email, research, access control to applications, and hundreds of other applications.
For the record - NO ONE can forward their mail to a civilian mail account. That is by design to protect your information. There are ways to access your AKO mail on your personal systems. Please refer to the help menus or call the help desk for assistance.
Colonel (R) Harold Tucker 10/24/08 05:43 pm ET
Although there is heavy traffic on this site, it is time for the Army to get with the program. Most use SharePoint now at work (I did in Baghdad just 1 year ago) and its features are superb to what AKO offers. No one in my unit ever collaborated on the AKO site. It took too long to log in and there was never a link to your work space. The mail features are lacking. As a retiree, I cannot forward my AKO mail to my civilian mail account. I do not and will not use AKO unless it migrates to a more useful and functional web portal.
LTC P Ferguson, AN (retired) 10/24/08 08:45 am ET
When will this be open to Army retirees again?
COL (R) B. Braun 10/23/08 08:54 am ET