I recently posted on Enterprise 2.0 and Web Social Media in Operation in Haiti Relief. The post mentioned that the US military is using an Enterprise 2.0 style collaborative network to help coordinate its relief efforts in Haiti. The TISC (Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation) is a new iteration of APAN (the All Partners Access Network) which was developed by the Defense Department a few years ago. I recently spoke with Walton Smith who was involved in the development of APAN to get the details. First, I will cover how it works and then cover how it came into being and then its use in Haiti. We have been reading about the logistics troubles in Haiti but they might be even worse without the TISC. Haiti is the first activity of scale to use the system.

When you are determining ROI based on number of hospital beds filled and people who receive much needed food, the benefits take on a different meaning. The TISC concept is to help the US military better coordinate with NGOs and other countries when disaster strikes. The objective is to a create system that not only helps with particular disasters but also builds an archive of best practices, key people/organizations and useful information to better handle future needs, as well as a platform for efficient cooperation.

There are main components of the system: forums, wikis, chat and blogs. In the forums, people are able to ask questions (how to find experts, etc.) and make requests (can you help with this issue, etc.), as well as offer help or point out resources that others can draw on (e.g., available hospital beds or safe landing areas). The forum tags content and sets up a treaded dialog on the specific issues.  The chat tool allows for real time secure communications.  Then the content is organized and placed in a wiki for ease of retrieval. Finally, the best practices are abstracted and put into blogs to attract comments and be available for use in future disaster relief efforts.  In the future, there will be expert locators and profiles.

This version of APAN began two years ago when the US Pacific Command (PACOM) wanted to develop an online community for the free flow of information between validated people from the US military, NGOs and other countries.  Ty Wooldrige and Jerry Giles led the effort for PACOM. Booz Allen was asked to create the system with PACOM, and James Kaina and Tim Gramp are the Booz Allen leads.

The system was first tested on some small efforts. The support for mobile devices was strengthened. The US Southern Command asked the PACOM to provide an operational demonstration of the system. The PACOM team was in Miami for this demo when the Haiti earthquake struck. The Southern Command said to forget simply doing a demo and decided to put the system into real use to help with Haiti. Now APAN is providing real-time help, validating the concept and vision, gathering useful content, and the Haiti effort is providing a significant test of the system to make further improvements.

The US military was one of the early leaders in knowledge management and the use of after action reviews and lessons learned. It is nice to see it acting as one of the leaders in the use of Enterprise 2.0 concepts that take the vision of knowledge management significantly forward with new tools, transparency, and capabilities.