FCW Insider: DOD and IT...two views

There are two items this week involving the military and IT. The first is the release of the Army's "history" on the war in Iraq, which has garnered a lot of attention since the . More on that in a moment, because first... The Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes this morning has a fascinating interview with Former Marine Tyler Boudreau headlined, The WSJ piece is interesting to read in and of itself, but, like so many things online, it quickly sent me flying through a number of other links. Here is the top of the WSJ article: From the WSJ piece, I quickly jumped to Boudreau's Industry Standard article, . It is very well-written and a fascinating read, even for you non-DOD people who think that IT in Iraq has nothing to do with you. Suffice it to say that Boudreau is not a big fan of military IT. It is an interesting perspective worth hearing. Another perspective... In case you missed it in April, The military is important to watch because it has been way ahead of the rest of government on many issues. After all, the buzz around Web 2.0 and collaboration is essentially what the military has for years referred to as "network-centric operations" — making the right information available at the right time to the right people to make the right decisions. And remarkable programs such as are essentially what the military calls "situational awareness." There are real implications for all of us. We are all fighting a "war" in one way or another, aren't we?That being said, I'm going to jump back to the Army's Iraq self-assessment. Right upfront, I have to say that I have not read the report yet — it is more than 700 pages. I'm curious to see if the self-assessment talks about technology and/or about transformation and the Rumsfeldian concept of the smaller, leaner, more lethal fighting force. (Background reading: of Sunday's NYT piece can be seen ; Monday had an interview with the author of the report and spoke to , a defense and foreign policy consultant and author of the book .)In the meantime, it is interesting to see how government organizations make these kinds of popular documents available to Joe Citizen. For those interested in getting a copy of the report, go to . Of course, that isn't an easy Web site to remember. I found that link through a link on PBS' NewsHour Web site, although it wasn't on the page that contained Monday's interview, so if you missed it, you were out of luck. But the Army and the Defense Department didn't make it very easy either. There is no mention of the report on the Army's main Web site, , or on DOD's . The Web portal also doesn't mention the report on its main page. I don't know if there were links there earlier, but it seems like a missed opportunity to make information easily accessible, but I just did a fairly cursory review of sites. If I missed it, I am and have somebody tell me how Joe Citizen would have found this report.Meanwhile, I have some reading to do this weekend.