Battle command knowledge system

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The battle command knowledge system (BCKS) is the change agent for implementing knowledge management (KM) capabilities into the training and military operations of the United States Army. BCKS is headquartered at the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

KM forums

BCKS provides a social network of facilitated professional forums that provide a foundation for knowledge transfer. Army soldiers and civilians connect to share explicit and tacit knowledge to solve problems, share best practices, and develop their professional skills. Leaders and staff members have access to others with similar duty positions and challenges. Functional specialists and those interested in a particular specialized domain gather virtually in focused forums.

Army Professional Forums were informally implemented by passionate volunteers who wanted to share their knowledge and experience with their peers in order to improve their profession. CompanyCommand.com and Platoon Leader were formally adopted by the U.S. Army in 2002. The Battle Command Knowledge System Professional Forums were formed in September 2004 to provide structure to this innovative knowledge sharing process. Later, the NCOTeam.org was also supported and adopted by BCKS.

By September 2004, there were four formal U.S. Army Professional Forums with approximately 20,000 members. Since that time, the U.S. Army has grown their Professional Forums into one of the premier collaboration instruments in the U.S. Government with 46 Professional Forums supporting active and reserve forces as well as the National Guard. The Professional Forums support soldiers around the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. These collaboration tools have been widely accepted across the entire enterprise structure, with membership ranging from General Officer to Private, all being able to share their unique knowledge and experience with others on the Professional Forum without regard to rank or position. Army Professional Forums currently have over 130,000 members and are growing at a rate of approximately 1,900 new members per month mainly by word of mouth through a grassroots effort.

Statistics

• More than 50 BCKS forums with approximately 162,000 accounts
• 4 West Point forums with 17,000 accounts
• BCKS Growth = 3,000 per month
• West Point Growth = 400 per month
• Total Growth = 3,400 per month
• 83,000 unique visitors per month
• 2,800 unique visitors per day

NCO site history

NCO Net origins began in the early 1990s with Command Sergeant Major Daniel K. Elder exploring his personal computer and modem with friends. They were dabbling with PCs and the new telecommunication capability – bulletin board systems (BBS's). With a dial up modem hosted in his house and a single phone line, NCOs could log onto the "The Old Soldiers BBS" with a local Ft. Knox KY number. In the earliest days, only one person at a time could connect to the BBS – an era before the internet, before Google, and before military documents were easily accessed. It was also a time where long distance costs were charged. But once dialed in, the NCO would find relevant files and time saver programs for soldiers, many of them provided by the Command and Control Microcomputer Users Group (C2MUG) at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas. Users could also log on daily to read and respond to postings in the threaded discussions. The NCO site was the manual Yahoo search engine for Army NCOs.

By 1997 the BBS went away. CSM Elder continued to explore technology and began building the first NCO website on GeoCities. Here the focus began to expand with how the internet could help soldiers in their day to day productivity. His buddies gave feedback on what would be beneficial. The site began to host soldier related programs. NCOs would go to the site to share Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) or Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs). But a percentage of them stayed and interactively participated in the discussions. These highly motivated and interested NCOs became the Peer Mentors who helped other NCOs. The Peer Mentors seldom met in person. The Peer Mentors became a family, they argued, laughed and most of all learned from each other. They would physically call other NCOs to help them solve their problems. The Peer Mentors were all volunteers who just wanted to make things better for the other NCOs. Later the site moved which required the purchase of an URL and software registrations. CSM Elder purchased this software out of his pocket. Anything that would help NCOs of today to stay relevant was provided by CSM Elder and his "merry band" of misfits.

CSM Elder emphasized that there was a gap in knowledge among the enlisted ranks. He created the NCO site to fill this void. The NCO site provided tools and discussions on how to use them, how to find what they needed, and how to digest it all. It was all about what to do and how to do your job. As friends told friends, the site became popular. At one point, the NCO site was used by many NCOs in the Army. Dedicated and passionate volunteers gave their personal time and resources to develop, grow, and make the NCO site relevant. Each NCO had a full-time day job. It was a team effort with many unsung heroes. On August 28, 2003, Cmd Sgt Maj. Dan Elder was awarded the first-ever AKM Pioneer Award by the US Army Chief Information Officer.

In October 2005 the NCO site migrated at the US Army Sergeants Major Academy into the Battle Command Knowledge System. Today the NCO Net is a composite of all its very successful predecessors. NCO Net has evolved into a global system of professional forums, knowledge centers, and supporting toolkits for sharing information and experiences, problems solving, improving operational performance and support of the Non-Commissioned Officers Education System (NCOES). Most of the original Peer Mentors continue to volunteer and make NCO Net work.

In addition to platform and leadership changes, NCO Net has two professional forum facilitators who coordinated the transition of the NCO Team site into the NCO Net, brought the volunteer NCO Team Facilitators (formally known as the Peer Mentors) on board, integrated the NCO Net into the U.S. Army Sergeant Major Academy (USASMA) courses, and consistently espoused the benefits of NCO Net to the Senior NCO Leadership of the Army. Given the inheritance of the NCO team and the leadership, persistence and hard work, NCO Net continues to provide a collaborative capability allowing NCOs from across the Army to rapidly get answers to questions and provide peer to peer discussions of important issues to the Army and the NCO Corps.

KM doctrine

Doctrine is sound military advice prepared in advance. Army doctrine provides a common framework of operations from which plans can be developed and successfully executed. Doctrine provides a common language and defines the terms used in the profession. Doctrine presents the fundamental principles that guide the employment of forces and facilitates organizing forces tailoring for specific operation.

BCKS helped develop the first Army KM doctrine. Working in partnership with the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate (CADD), BCKS wrote a field manual interim (FMI) 6-01.1 "The Battle Command Knowledge Management Cell". This collaborative effort included direct input from soldiers in the field. FMI 6-01.1 will serve as the Army’s authoritative source for the Battle Command Knowledge Management Cell (BCKM). It will serve as the standard reference for understanding the role of knowledge management in operations. Although the FMI 6-01.1 focuses on the modular division BCKM cell, it will be applicable from brigade to corps level. FMI 6-01.1 will have an effective lifespan of two years from publication at which time a regular FM is planned to supersede it. BCKS is the primary coordinator and author of the initial draft of this FMI.

Topics included in the FMI are: Definitions, types of knowledge, KM principles, spectrum of KM strategy, knowledge lifecycles, and relationship of KM with Battle Command, KM in ARFORGEN, BCKM cell functions, duties, and responsibilities, KM processes, case studies, and examples.

KM multi-repository search engine

With the explosion of databases and portals of knowledge artifacts throughout the United States Department of Defense, as well as access restrictions placed on them by community/forums leaders, it is difficult for soldiers to quickly find and apply relevant information in support of their combat mission. The Battle Command Knowledge System (BCKS) has provided the resources and leadership to implement the Warrior Knowledge Base (WKB), an online repository of data assets/artifacts and platform for conducting federated searches across domains. The BCKS vision is to make it easy for soldiers to find trusted data assets from portals and domains throughout the Army and the DoD, so information can be captured, repurposed and shared within minutes. Most repositories are not structured to support semantic searches of their content, only searches of indexed information, which hinders discovery. They cannot provide the real-time linkage between the data asset and the forum where it is being discussed and validated. The BCKS leadership and vision brings industry-leading search and content management technology to soldiers worldwide.

Digital Storytelling and Interactive Video

Narrative engineering is the KM discipline that applies storytelling to the purposes of the organization. The NCO Net pilot is the cornerstone of Army narrative engineering, and is designed to bring storytelling to bear for: knowledge creation, sharing and exploitation; building and integrating individual, team, and organizational expertise; leader development and leadership; a "springboard" for change; and situational awareness, as a way to organize and articulate perception, interpretation and actionable prediction in an operational environment. The NCO Net is a foundational Army community of practice, but the narrative engineering pilot has implications across the entire breadth and depth of military operations, learning, and innovation. The NCO Net pilot focuses on a road to competency in actionable cultural awareness using digital stories and face-to-face stories, both supported by a Narrative Wizard.

Results

NCO Net posted a 3D animated video clip "Trouble at Checkpoint 4" showing a set of problems unfolding at a checkpoint in Iraq. The online NCO facilitator led discussion with context specific thought questions on how the soldiers could handle the situation. Over 220 comments from junior to senior ranks were posted within first 48 hours. This video and comments have been viewed over 6,000 times in US, Europe, and Iraq. Some of the comments received were:

• Good leadership training
• Many discussions concerning how soldiers should have reacted
• Good cultural awareness training
• Amateurs talk about TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures – 'How to books'), professionals talk about people and cultures

References

Work the WWW, MSG Daniel K. Elder, NCO Journal, Fall 1997, p. 10–14. https://usasma.bliss.army.mil/NCOJournal/97fall.pdf

External links

• BCKS public webpage