The Problem With Portals
The recent focus on information sharing has led to the proliferation of Web 2.0 tools such as portals and wikis across the U.S. Defense Department. However, these tools are challenging the government’s network-centric transformation by creating new virtual information silos across the Global
As part of the Defense Department’s network-centric transformation, there has been a strong push to make information visible, accessible and understandable to improve the department’s efficiency and effectiveness. Making the information available to warfighters when they need it has become a driving principle of network-centric operations. While many military and civilian users have leveraged a variety of portals, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools to make their information available on the GIG, these applications have begun to hinder information sharing. Warfighters, operators or analysts now have a number of different portals and Web sites they must access—and passwords they need to remember—to accomplish their mission. These virtual information silos are challenging the network-centric information-sharing efforts across the department.
The question is how the department can continue to embrace these information-sharing tools while avoiding virtual-information silos and creating the envisioned network-centric information environment. Consolidating tools into a single portal such as Defense Knowledge Online or into a single wiki such as Intellipedia is a step in the right direction, but it is not realistic. There always will be a diverse set of information-sharing requirements and restrictions across the Defense Department enterprise, so there always will be a diverse set of information-sharing tools.
Posting data in a portal or on a wiki is not really network-centric information sharing. The information only is available to users who know the location of the information, employ that specific tool and understand what the information means once they locate it. To breakdown these virtual information silos, the challenge is making the information that is stored in these Web 2.0 tools visible, accessible and understandable.
While social networking tools create a dynamic information environment that provides new capabilities and tools, many of those applications are restricted to that specific environment. Users of one tool should be able to query for data not only from within their tool’s information domain but also across the GIG into the information domain of other Web 2.0 tools.
Facebook and MySpace offer a commercial example of information silos. A Facebook member should be able to search for information within MySpace and other information domains across the enterprise. In the military, warfighters, analysts or operators should be able to query for information using their current systems or tools to discover and retrieve data across the GIG, including from within various Web 2.0 tools’ information domains.
Exposing the data within a social networking tool’s information domain does not mean just indexing the data like Google to support simple keyword searches. The information must be tagged with government standards such as the Department of Defense Metadata Discovery Specification and Universal Core to support the detailed queries. Enhancing Web 2.0 tools to support mandatory and automatic tagging of the data as it is posted or uploaded will help make the information within the tool discoverable across the GIG.
These tools must be enhanced to share data-using Web services that allow other social networking applications, systems and services to access the data within their information domain at the machine level. Web 2.0 tools need to be integrated with the emerging core enterprise services being developed across the department as part of a network-centric information-sharing infrastructure. For example, integration with an enterprise messaging service would allow Web 2.0 tools to publish data once to the enterprise and also enable multiple users/systems/services to subscribe to the data.
Once data in Web 2.0 tools is discoverable and accessible, the challenge becomes understanding its meaning. Most data within Web 2.0 tools is unstructured, and exposing or publishing that meaning can be difficult without using a common vocabulary and schema. Web 2.0 tools must leverage emerging semantic tools so they can publish data in common formats to maximize the usability of that information across the GIG. Data published by these tools should be either readily displayed within users’ tools or mediated into the receiving tool’s format to display and process the data. Using common schemata makes the data understandable at the machine level so the information can be made useful.
The Defense Science Board Task Force recently published its Final Report on Achieving Interoperability in a Net-Centric Environment and found that the Defense Department is far from creating an interoperable network-centric environment. Senior leadership across the department that advocates the use of Web 2.0 tools to engage and retain the digital natives now joining the military must understand the information-sharing challenges these tools present and how they must be adapted to support a network-centric organization. Transforming Web 2.0 tools to support the Defense Department’s network-centric vision will be a key challenge as the department moves forward.
Trey Rhiddlehoover is the director of GIG solutions at Solers Incorporated.
