The result was an 18-minute CD-ROM that Morris presented to Admiral Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, at the Pentagon. "At the end of the briefing, he said, 'That's exactly what I want. Go out and make it happen,'" Bertsch says.
It was a limited victory. The naval chief gave his blessing but no dollars. The training unit that Morris and Bertsch are assigned to, the Naval Personnel Development Command (NPDC), would have to fund the portal launch using existing budget lines. Morris and Bertsch scraped together $4.5 million from various training and education budgets over six months, during which time they prepared RFPs and reviewed vendor bids. They also assembled a small group that included Chris Piereman, a retired master chief electronic technician with the Navy and now a contractor, and Capt. James Kantner, a Navy reservist on active duty.
Perhaps the most notable, and surprising, selection was a little-known company called Appian Corp., which would act as the collaboration-software vendor and integrator. (A few Appian developers are always on site in Norfolk; two more are assigned to Saufley Field, the naval education and training center in Pensacola, Fla.; and one is assigned to the Center for Naval Intelligence in Damneck, Va.)
Appian beat out IBM by, among other things, agreeing to buy the hardware--a Sun Microsystems server to run the Oracle database and four Sun Fire 280R systems to run the application servers--on behalf of the Navy. Because there was no money left in this Navy unit's budget for hardware, Appian bundled that cost into the service agreement and will transfer ownership of the systems to the Navy after one year.
As you would expect from a Web portal, NKO organizes a variety of data stores that existed in one form or another. Sailors can access training materials, a white pages directory of military personnel and third-party research tools. But the portal also provides new services, including instant messaging, discussion boards and scheduled chats that are replayable. Collaborative whiteboarding and workflow controls are on the way.
Interactive career management is a highlight of NKO. Using a visual map called the 5 Vector Model--a career matrix that shows education and training qualifications--a sailor can compare his skills with the job requirements of a more senior position, and then sign up for the appropriate training. Supervisors can use the graphs to gauge the readiness of their squads in aggregate. Morris calls it "a Dow Jones for the work force, a human capital index."
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