CRGT

CRGT designed, developed, and continues to operate the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) program. AKO is the largest government knowledge management portal with 2.2+ million users worldwide. CRGT provides data center operations, help desk (call center), application development (knowledge management; Army Home Page), network security, search, collaboration, and training support.

The AKO Program supports soldiers and the Army’s mission by providing a secure single location for Army personnel to receive online collaboration services, such as: email and document sharing; e-learning; medical appointment scheduling; equipment records; pay statements; and financial, travel, and legal support. CRGT provides design, development, testing, implementation, maintenance, and hosting support to ensure system availability, security, and functionality meet stakeholder objectives and needs, running in classified and unclassified environments.

AKO’s collaboration services to the global Army community are centered around email, instant and video messaging, and portal capabilities such as knowledge management and distribution, independently maintained sub portals, group management, discussion groups and threads, and a White Pages style directory encompassing more than two million active users. CRGT provides ongoing development, testing, integration, and sustainment of this dynamic environment. Through a lifecycle requirements management, development, release and deployment, and sustainment methodology, CRGT manages developers, COTS product vendors, and subcontractor development groups working together in a rapid application development environment to provide ongoing new capability in monthly release cycles. This allows the Army to address end-user requirements as well as changes in government policy mandates in a continuous and rapid response scenario.

CRGT’s robust, ITIL-based change management and release model allows multiple groups to be contributors to a central set of services, while lowering the risk of introducing change into the environment.

AKO Highlights:

• Authoritative identity management database, created by CRGT, consolidating information from more than 20 disparate personnel data sources throughout the Department of Defense (DoD) into a single authoritative directory utilizing an extract, transform, and load (ETL) methodology.
• CRGT identified and implemented a mobile collaboration solution for the U.S. Army with end-to-end security; DoD Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) authentication, signing, and encryption; and FIPS 140-2 compliant data-at-rest encryption, utilizing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) smartphones.
• AKO’s mobile email solution.
• Provided a risk management and mitigation plan, as well as our plans for developing both technical and end-user training. Utilizing our quality management plan, these documents were updated, when needed, to reflect changing requirements or other areas of targeted efficiencies.

CRGT received in-depth technical specifications for each solution, including sample architectures. We also worked with each vendor to understand the scope of work to adapt their software to meet the Army’s needs. After considering all of the factors, CRGT recommended selection of the Good Mobile Messaging solution. The architecture for this solution was developed and entered into the customer’s configuration management database for review and approval.

All formal project documentation including architectural designs, end-user and technical staff training, maintenance standard operating procedures, and security compliance documents are maintained in the customer’s documentation repository, and are updated regularly through the configuration/change management process.