The Army’s deputy chief information officer is proposing a new plan that would expand the Army’s mobility strategy beyond the BlackBerry and allow users to do government work on their personal devices. If the Army works aggressively through partnerships with the National Security Agency and industry, it could be ready to release a request for proposal for mobile technology within the next 12 months, said Army deputy CIO Mike Krieger, at a mobility event last week. The contract would provide a large number of soldiers, contractors and civilians with zero client mobile devices, or smartphones that have no operating systems…
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Lt. Gen. Susan Lawrence has officially taken the reigns as Army’s chief information officer. In her new role, Lawrence oversees Army’s $10 billion information technology budget and supports network operations, information management and other IT functions. “Right now, the network is the Army’s number one modernization effort,” Lawrence said in an online announcement. “We want a network that can provide Soldiers and civilians information of all categories and forms, as well as a means to collaborate in real-time, at the exact moment required, in any environment, under all circumstances.”
Call it “Halo: Kandahar.” The Army is looking for ideas from the private sector on how to build a “virtual world” for training soldiers. But the requirements the Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command outlined in its June 2 request for information don’t sound that different from many popular Playstation or Xbox video games. The Army wants the game to contain highly complex, interactive environments that precisely recreate real-world terrain “on a 1:1 scale,” changing weather conditions, basic physics and collision detection, and realistic vehicles and weapons. And the virtual world should be able to handle 10,000 players and in-game…
The Army is at the forefront of social networking, offering Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages to connect the public with soldiers in uniform. And while the military enjoys broad support online — the Army’s Facebook page has 173,000 fans — that doesn’t mean it’s immune from inappropriate posts from those who take issue with the military or politics. Policing racist, sexist or harassing comments is important to maintaining the military’s integrity, but deleting too many comments may make users suspicious of censorship, said Staff Sgt. Josh Salmons, emerging media coordinator at Fort Meade’s Defense Information School during a Feb. 24…