Defense Web portal not funded in fiscal 2010 budget

A Web portal that provides members of the military with e-mail, social networking and teleconferencing capabilities has not received funding in the Defense Department's fiscal 2010 budget.

A joint Defense steering group is working on a strategic plan to fund the Defense Knowledge Online Web portal in its 2010 budget, which the department plans to send to Congress in March or April, said Margaret McBride, a spokeswoman for the Army's Office of the Chief Information Officer. The Army, which manages the portal, said DKO has support across Defense.

Funding for DKO in 2010 and beyond is tied to meeting the requirements of end users throughout Defense, including all the services as well as the joint commands. "The DKO steering group is working to ensure the DKO portal provides the capabilities/services required by the services and the joint community," McBride said. "The funding strategy will reflect those requirements."

The Army also manages Army Knowledge Online, which serves as a base for DKO and is fully funded through fiscal 2015, McBride said. AKO and DKO, which run on the Defense nonclassified network, provide users who have access to the portals with services such as e-mail, file storage and social networking and teleconferencing capabilities. In October, AKO recorded its 1 billionth log in, making it the most used portal in the federal government, according to the Army.

The service launched AKO in 2001. In 2005, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Croom, then the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, decided to adopt AKO as the building block for DKO. DISA and the Joint Forces Command have embraced DKO, but the Air Force and Navy continue to operate their own sites -- the Air Force portal and Navy Knowledge Online.

When he retired last summer, Croom said the Air Force and Navy had not yet fully accepted DKO because it offered a "smorgasbord of services" and the Air Force and Navy preferred to choose the applications they wanted to use.