'Air Force Knowledge Now' turns 10

  • Published
  • By Daryl Mayer
  • 88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) --  Randy Adkins, Knowledge Management Center of Excellence director, clearly recalls the Friday afternoon when the idea of Knowledge Now was first raised.

Members of the Air Force Materiel Command staff discussed the possibility of a "lessons-learned" database and sent the idea to Mr. Adkins, who had been working on Internet-based training at the time.

"They saw it as a chocolate and peanut butter kind of solution, two things that naturally belonged together," he said.

Rather than go for the instant solution, which would have been easy, Mr. Adkins decided to explore the possibilities. Following conversations with experts in other DOD organizations and research into the latest industry practices, he realized he was on to something much larger than initially imagined.

The traditional "lessons learned" sort of product was only part of the solution, he discovered. Certainly learning from the mistakes or successes of others has value, but why stop there? If you could collect all types of data -- lessons learned, technical instructions, document templates, whatever -- and put them in a central location that would be easily searchable and accessible to anyone, anywhere, then you would really be on to something.

Now 10 years hence, Air Force Knowledge Management may well be barely recognizable to those who first raised the idea.

With more than 320,000 members and 100,000 visitors viewing 12 million pages a month, AFKN has become the largest implementation of knowledge management in the federal government.

"We are adding 1,000 new users and 100 new communities every week," said Bill Miles, a contractor with Triune Group that assists in the program management of AFKN. "Every time we think it is going to tail off, it just keeps going."

It is often confused with the Air Force Portal, but AFKN is a separate system altogether.

"We do have reduced sign-on with the portal which means if you're logged into the portal you can go directly into AFKN," Mr. Miles said.

While building the system, the team largely followed the adage that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

The key there, Mr. Adkins said, was to attract users by offering solutions to their problems. AFKN has a decentralized approach by putting users in charge of managing their own content. The users are responsible for their community content which in turn enables them the freedom to use the applications to support their mission requirements.

"We didn't want to add new technology just because it was the new, hot thing," he said. "You have to target a problem that people are facing and develop a way to solve it. If you have good simple solutions to problems, you don't have to mandate using a system. People will use it because it makes it easier to accomplish the mission."

Distributing information quickly is one such area. In the old days, Air Force tech orders were printed in hardcopy and then mailed to bases around the world. Progress eventually led to mailing computer discs, but that still takes time. Today, they are loaded on AFKN and instantly available to any member, worldwide, according to Mr. Miles.

Talking about getting things done invariably leads Mr. Adkins, who others in the office refer to as the "Father of AFKN," to one of his favorite anecdotes.

A few years back, a Marine contracting officer deployed to Africa needed a sample document to complete a contract with a local vendor. Searching AFKN, he found what he needed from a contracting officer at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. Unfortunately, the Army computer he was using wouldn't allow him to download and decrypt the Air Force document. He made a call to the AFKN Help Desk at Wright-Patterson and they were able to transfer the file to the Marine.

"Our users are much smarter than we are," Mr. Adkins said. "We've made this cache of knowledge available to them and they are finding incredibly innovative ways to use it to accomplish the mission."

There was another instance where a young Air Force staff sergeant had to build an armory from scratch at a deployed location. He posted a question on an AFKN forum that put him in contact with a master sergeant based in the states who had been in the same situation months earlier. The two collaborated and exchanged documents over AFKN to get the job done.

"Starting from scratch is nuts," Mr. Adkins said. "Whatever situation you're in, you can bet somebody, somewhere has been through something similar. As long as they've loaded the knowledge into AFKN, you will be able to find it and put it to use."

Loading more knowledge into the system increased the value, but it also caused problems. The sheer volume of information available led to searches returning vast numbers of hits which was difficult for users to digest.

"Feedback from our users is critical to us," Mr. Adkins said. "They let us know there is a problem and then we can fix it.  We tend to learn more from our failures than our successes."

Over the past year, the office has upgraded the search function within AFKN to make it more efficient.

"Our enhanced filters let you sort through the search results to more quickly find what you are looking for," Mr. Miles said.

Finding the information a user is looking for is a vital step. The team learned early on that collecting and storing knowledge did little if no one could put it to good use.

The enhanced search function helps people find what they are looking for, but what about people who don't know what they could use?

The team is looking for ways to help them as well. One possible answer might be an AFKN version of Facebook, the popular social media tool used by millions on the Internet.

"People could get on and post about things they are working on," Mr. Adkins said. "Maybe they are trying to solve a problem that you've already conquered. Or it might be they are tackling a problem that you've become so accustomed to that you haven't even thought about solving it."

In its current form, the collaborative power of AFKN is purposeful, which means individuals are contacting other individuals to work problems and solutions. On the other hand, when you have larger groups sharing with other groups you open the possibility of a sort of "accidental improvement."

"You can learn the answers to questions that you hadn't even thought to ask," Mr. Adkins said. "There is a lot of power in that."

In the future, Mr. Adkins would like to see the continued expansion of AFKN through its connection to systems run by the other DOD services.

"I'd really like to see us become even more joint," he said. "The technology shouldn't be difficult to overcome. The problem normally is in helping people see beyond the normal boundaries."

As he prepares to retire, Mr. Adkins knows he's created something with staying power.

"AFKN has taken on a life of its own now. Every day it gets smarter," Mr. Adkins said. "At 10 years, it is just an adolescent. I really have no idea how valuable it will become over the next 10 years."