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Press Release
PEO C3T Knowledge Management Team Achieves Technology Breakthrough Led by DSA Single Sign-On becomes a reality.
The U. S. Army is on its way to becoming "a network-centric, knowledge-based force" that is totally integrated and works as a single unit. That's good, because achievement is no less than a mandate from the Secretary of the Army, Thomas E. White, and the Army Chief of Staff, Eric K. Shinseki.
Progress towards this goal has been made over the last few years in giant leaps and smaller strides. Most recently, a significant breakthrough occurred for the U. S. Army Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications Systems Tactical (PEO C3T) Knowledge Management Center and its Team Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors (C4IEWS) partners.
The PEO C3T Knowledge Management team at Fort Monmouth, NJ and the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) Team, overcame a complicated technical hurdle that had blocked the full integration of the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) and its sub-portal with the Team C4IEWS Knowledge Centers (KC) systems. For the first time, users now can access both systems and their component portals with one, single sign-on or SSO. A user's identification and password will be entered once, and with no other prompts, that user will have access to all knowledge assets within the AKO and KC realms.
DSA's Eric Kastner played the lead technical role for PEO C3T. Mr. Kastner gives much of the credit for the success to the technical expertise and teamwork of the AKO. Acknowledging some of the difficulties encountered on the way to success, Mr. Kastner identified the issue of multiple search engines as an initial problem. Each Knowledge Management portal had to recognize the same user, rather than requiring the user to log-in each portal's proprietary security system. The single sign-on solution had to work with every portal's search engine software, and there were issues with users who were not registered for all Intranet sites. A secondary directory was developed allowing an unregistered user to be found, and accepting that user's identification and password through a phased migration.
"It's counter-productive for users to be prompted for multiple logins when searching for information vital to their mission," says Mr. Kastner. "If the process is easy to use, it is more likely to be used. With the Army's goal to be truly integrated and online-friendly, the single sign-on, or SSO, is an important step."
The next step for the PEO C3T Knowledge Management team is to roll out the use of the SSO in phases over the next several weeks. According to Kastner, more than 12,000 users at Fort Monmouth will soon be able to log-on and have access to all the knowledge assets of PEO C3T and Army Knowledge Online. "This capability was the No. 1 priority of the CIO office. It was part of our job to make it happen", he said.
DSA is a business driven IT solutions provider. Since 1963, the company has been delivering information technology services and solutions to government and industry. Headquartered in Pennsauken, N.J. with operations in Red Bank, N.J., Philadelphia, Pa., and Fairfax, Va., DSA brings together experts in business, security, project management and technology
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