Hoo-ah: Army's Knowledge Portal to Hit 1 Billion Mark

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."