Defense tool linking disaster relief community set to relaunch by end of year

The Defense Department will launch on Dec. 30 a new version of the All Partners Access Network, a website that helped it coordinate with the international disaster community on the ground after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti earlier this year.

APAN is an online, nonclassified tool that helps the department collaborate and communicate with any individual, agency, external country, or organization that does not have ready access to traditional Defense systems and networks. The system was in development when a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti in January.

The idea was to build a system that will allow agencies that typically do not work with the department to communicate and collaborate. When the earthquake hit, Defense knew it needed to roll out the program eight months early, said Maj. Rob Somarriba, chief of the programs and projects division at U.S. Southern Command in Doral, Fla., which oversaw Defense's relief effort on the island nation.

It "did provide value, some good cases of where collaboration really helped people connect not just with SOUTHCOM but among themselves," Somarriba said. "It was a good thing it was rolled out early; [the] current tool that we had didn't have the capabilities that we needed."

After Haiti, Defense took a broad look at the system and listened to what users said about their experience with it. After the department finished the review in September, the technical team and frequent site users evaluated APAN, said Jerry Giles, the site's technical director, who is based At U.S. Pacific Command in Honolulu.

"When [we got] APAN, [it was] not very user friendly," Giles said. "User groups worked on this, looked at all the feedback [and standards] . . . [to] have a brand-new version of APAN on Dec. 30." A beta version of the new site currently is available.

It was basic usability, including navigation and design, the site needed to improve, Giles said. As software developers, the APAN technical team sometimes forgets what users want and need, he added. Among the upgrades is the ability to have peer-to-peer and group chat on the site. Online chat was improved, Giles said, after determining what did and didn't work during the Haiti disaster. He noted online chat was one of the primary tools used during the relief effort.

The site also will add e-mail capability, including having a @apan.org e-mail option, and have more overall function with Google maps "since that is what everybody uses," Giles said.

One major change is the registration process, Giles said. Previously, registering on the site was time-consuming and users had to phone in to receive a password. In early January 2011, registration will be faster and users will be able to select their own passwords, he said.

"The changes [are] improvements to the actual capabilities that were being used," Giles said. "It wasn't up to speed; we had to make changes on the fly [in Haiti], and then improved on that throughout the year."

The site also has another launch planned for summer 2011 and will be based on a new vendor platform. "We're going to marry up to make sure we're doing the right site," he said.