Third AKM guidance memo on the way

The Army soon will release its third knowledge management guidance memorandum, which will be focused completely on personnel issues, according to the service's chief information officer.

Army CIO Lt. Gen. Peter Cuviello said that he and Lt. Gen. John Le Moyne, the deputy chief of staff for personnel, have just co-signed the service's third Army Knowledge Management (AKM) guidance memorandum and passed it up to the Army secretary and chief of staff for review and approval.

The first two AKM guidance memos identified the service's five main knowledge management goals and ordered server and application reductions. The third guidance document will focus exclusively on staff, Cuviello said during a Jan. 23 speech at a Network Centric Warfare conference in Arlington, Va.

Ideally, the Army's leadership will sign the new memo "within a couple of weeks," Cuviello said. By comparison, the second memo, which went into effect in June 2002, took about two months to receive approval.

The Army's original five AKM goals were issued in August 2001 and included:

* Governance and cultural change.

* Knowledge management through best business practices.

* Enterprise management.

* Establishing the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) portal.

* Increasing workforce.

The portal, which provides Army news, distance-learning opportunities, e-mail accounts, a search engine and a chat room, now contains nearly 1.2 million accounts, including 16,800 operating on the Defense Department's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET), and may be the most advanced AKM goal, Cuviello said.

AKO accommodates about 89,000 users daily, and the SIPRNET version, which features secure e-mail and instant messaging, is being used extensively in Afghanistan, he said.

AKO also recently helped a noncommissioned officer (NCO) stationed in Afghanistan add a missing file to his assignment portfolio before giving it to his superior officer, Cuviello said.

The NCO was reviewing his file and noticed that a report was missing. He then used his AKO account to e-mail his wife in the United States. He told her where to find a copy of the missing paper file and provided a fax number where she could send it. The fax was received at an Army personnel center, which quickly digitized it and added it to the NCO's file. The NCO then re-examined his file, saw that it was complete, and e-mailed his superior to say that it was now ready for review.

The whole process, which would have taken about six months in a paper-based process, was done in about 48 hours using AKO, Cuviello said.