Bits: Ushahidi Crowdmap, Productivity Suites

1. Ushahidi: Ushahidi means testimony in Swahili. This crisis mapping technology was brought bear by an African organization amid the turmoil after the Kenyan elections of 2008. This is a platform for crowd sourcing SA - a capability to provide a means for any and all people in an area to contribute information about events in a particular area. The platform found huge success in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. A new offering from Ushahidi, Crowdmap, is a thin client version to be stood up and deployed rapidly by end users anywhere via the commercial internet. Imagine locals, local government and NGOs being able to add incident information to Crowdmap amid a crisis. Note that CrowdMap is cell phone SMS capable (this is significant in disaster areas and 3rd world regions). Powerful stuff.
2. Productivity Suites: Word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation software have long been grouped and called Productivity software (a relic term from pre-Web 2.0 of course). I have always been amazed by the government and military use of MS Office with its huge licensing costs and maintenance). Most End Users of productivity suites only use the bare bones essential functions - even if they are PowerPoint Ranger tabbed. Why pay big fees for a ton of functionality when cost effective solutions are available? Open Office has been around for quite sometime, offers a very robust desktop productivity suite and is free. In the web based realm, Zoho's "fake Office" solution and Google's Apps for Gov would meet the need, provide huge cost savings and, arguably, increase End User / Team productivity! Need I say more?

Apps4Army means more than the Apps alone

The US Army CIO/G6 is on the cusp of shattering a paradigm.


Lack of interoperability, high SW license costs, high specialized HW costs, proprietary code, high Dev / FSR support costs and, last but not least, poor UIs have hindered our Army's Battle Command (BC) capabilities for years. The non-POR rise has taken hold and in many ways surpassed the POR offerings (CIDNE, TIGR, Axis Pro, JADOCS anyone? - Not to mention CPOF came directly from DARPA as a non-POR). The CIO/G6 is posturing to align BC capabilities with commercial market offerings and change the combat / material developer.

Apps4Army is a game changer not because of the initial winning apps but because it has proven the Army may move forward with the "new" plan. Build apps - web (thin, thick), mobile and mobile native apps - in line with the Army's approved SDKs and APIs - and do it on 30/60 day dev / launch cycles. WIN-T (Increment 2 and beyond) will serve as an enabler to provide War-Fighters a ubiquitous network, robust bandwidth and hardware agnostic access to the cloud based services as well as authoritative data sources. End-User experience with "capabilities" will further catalyze this initiative as network permeation throughout Army echelons continues. In short order, the Army may be able to assemble mission specific apps in an on demand manner. This is End-User empowerment.


To see the existing mobile apps now, go to the US Army Marketplace (with CAC card). Some apps are available through Apple App store and Android Market. The BC environment is going to get real interesting in the very near future.

A win / win - "Google Apps for Gov"

Google's launch of Google Apps for Gov is a huge step in the right direction for End-Users (and the budget). Until now, it seems the gov has merely been dipping its toes in the Web2.0 waters. Use of Social media has skyrocketed, but full on adoption of new age web capabilities is a rarity. This may be the belly flop off the high dive needed to serve as a catalyst.

A few key points on Google Apps for Gov:

1. FISMA certification, a private cloud based on US soil and additional security measures.
2. At $50 per user per year, this is huge savings in licensing fees of traditional enterprise capabilities (HW and SW).
3. Google Apps and its WYSIWYG characteristics are well suited to more than meet the needs of most government agencies (fed, state and local).
4. Google Apps use readily enables hardware agnostic as well as mobile use.
5. Rapid adoption and integration of new apps such as Google Wave, Marketplace apps.
6. The Navy is already using Google Apps (on a .com) for InRelief - one can only wonder if more .mil adoptions will occur.
7. Is Chrome OS next?
8. Microsoft is shaking in their boots.

This is a win / win situation. Gov budgets are tight and gov Knowledge Workers are disgusted with outdated and out paced software tools (read MS Office, MS SharePoint, MS Exchange, MS etc). This capability is now wide open for the .gov domain and may very well take over the landscape - I would not be surprised if swarms of government entities rapidly adopt this solution.

For more details, read PC World's story.

Enable US Army Knowledge Workers

I recently had the thought (and shared)...

"Good Knowledge Workers blur this line: Creating/enabling then DOING with IT tools."

Here is an expansion on that thought in the context of US Army IT End Users...

3 simple facts:

1. GUIs were first established to empower End-Users (and sell computers to the masses). End-Users now had a huge array of software that could be used, but make it do much more, a user had to consult the programmers. 
2. YouTube taught a generation about URLs and HTML. These are terms and concepts once relegated to developers and technicians. This has forever changed the landscape. Technical terms, concepts and sharing have become the norm. 
3. There is a huge difference between SharePoint and Google Sites. Beyond primitive read, upload, download, you need a CS degree to do simple back-end stuff (and a lot of licensing money) in SP. You only need to be literate to find huge success in Google Apps. I chose this example, but everyone has their own examples of this. Same comparisons could be made for ATCCS, ABCS and New Age Non-POR systems.

Knowledge Workers (War-Fighters included) toe the line between developing, tweaking IT tools and using these tools in the daily execution of their work. These are trained experts in a field using IT tools they have been trained on to execute their mission, they then become the experts to consult on development of said tools (no different in the Mil, Gov, Civilian or Private sectors). These experts are thirsty for info and new tools to use. This thirst leads to wanting inter-operable tools to mash-up and tweak for their own peculiar use. The current state of commercially available OS, desktop apps, web apps and social media generally meet this need. Knowledge workers like GUIs and understand the underlying "nuts and bolts" to a certain extent (that is why lack of interoperability upsets them - they are just smart enough). To be quite honest - if the GUI does not work / makes no sense, if they cannot import info from an authoritative data source, if they cannot export correctly... they do not use it (US Army POR and Non-POR system use comes to mind - the guys behind TIGR back in the dark ages just may epitomize this).

Developers must remember the audience - the End User. Do not get freaked out because your business model is changing, make your money now from use NOT maintenance. Build it on the back end, provide authoritative data sources and let the End-User control and USE the front end. Handle the code, data sources, SDKs and APIs but allow GUI based app creation and intuitive user interfaces too. Military endeavors are paying close attention to this. The US Army Enterprise initiative is moving forward rapidly. I believe they are on track with planned permeation of network and enterprise capabilities, but apps may suffer due to uphill fights with entrenched IT contracts (we should not need a zillion Field Service Representatives (FSR) for each system / app like the Verizon Network commercials).

Every single War-Fighter is a Knowledge Worker and their IT use is getting ready to explode (imagine the first time you saw the Internet and now your use of it today). They will have it in their barracks, offices, TOCs and pockets. This is bigger than the Knowledge Management Officer (KMO) deal. Industry must make IT capabilities unique, useful, application based, inter-operable, standard, data portable, web based, mobile, synchronized and off-line capable - give them what is now the standard Knowledge Workers.

Bits: Cloud Storage, RSS

1. Cloud Storage: These days cloud computing is all the rage within DOD IT and rightfully so. Access to the same info from multiple devices - anytime, anywhere - always in sync. We are all familiar with web apps for various capabilities such as email, calendar, social media and even banking. One critical capability for End-Users to fully employ the cloud is file storage and I do not mean a wiki or SharePoint Portal type of application. I mean full on file storage and sync - a capability whereas End-Users may work with their files as intended on a local device and sync via the cloud to other devices. Any enterprise worth its salt and wishing full adoption must allocate "cloud drive space" for users and make this capability available. Bliss for End-Users is local storage (for times when there is zero connectivity), web based editing and web access to files. Examples include Live Mesh, Syncplicity, Memeo Connect and even Offisync.
2. RSS Reader: Where do I start with RSS and RSS Readers? I once said this was how one could control information, make information work for you (instead of you working for it) and I am sticking to that. Numerous web apps, blogs, maps, alerts, update notifications, invites - End-Users need a tool to provide a capability to funnel notifications and info to a single interface for ingestion and re-distribution (the Inbox is not the place). GeoRSS is also on the rise (but thats a discussion for another time). Secure enterprises, such as AKO/DKO need to address this and provide a web based open and secure authenticated feed capability. Google Reader is the preeminent web based reader and may be synced with 3rd party desktop and mobile apps (RSS via Outlook and IE is pitiful). Once End-Users realize the benefits of RSS, there is no turning back. Even though NEC (DOIM) may be blocking this link for many of you, check out my brief on RSS from 2008 for some visuals - its old, but still holds true.