The intelligence community has been using wikis for several years, hoping to spread the joy quickly, efficiently and wherever it might be needed. Now Christian has a story about the Army taking it another step, using wikis to spread doctrine and TTPs through the force. I hope the service is doing the same with its Center for Army Lessons Learned.
Christian's story follows:
In a conversation today with Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, the head of the Army's Combined Arms Center in Leavenworth, Kans., we learned that the Army is getting all Wiki on us.
Basically Caldwell is embracing the Web 2.0 phenomenon of making reference material available online in an easily updatable fashion by creating so-called Wiki pages based on the popular Wikipedia online reference source.
Caldwell told a group of military bloggers on a conference call today that he's trying to neck down the number of doctrine manuals from nearly 550 to just below 100 and to include some of the TTPs derived from them on Wiki pages. The way it works is that you can examine the tactical doctrine pages after logging in with your AKO account and you can update the pages with your own experiences and practices. Each area is moderated by a subject matter expert who edits entries and can chat with a Soldier updating the post to have him clarify his addition.
To Caldwell, this is the most efficient way to reach experts and get their feedback -- the actual Joes in the fight.
"We want to take the expertise of the Soldiers who are out there and get the experts input," Caldwell said.
So far the Army has posted seven TTPs in the last 10 days and received 5,000 page views. The goal is to have 230 manuals available by Wiki so Soldiers can have better access to the most updated information on how to win their fight.
