milSuite is a collection of online applications focused on improving the methods of secure collaboration for the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secu ...

. The effort is produced by the U.S. Army PEO EIS MilTech Solutions office with the online suite consisting of five primary applications: milBook, milWiki, milTube, milUniversity and milSurvey.

Applications

The primary applications that make up milSuite were launched as a collection of connected sites in 2009 and focused on open source software to create DoD-audience exclusive versions of popular and successful public websites, such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

and

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

. milSuite uses

Jive SBS Jive (formerly known as Clearspace, then Jive SBS, then Jive Engage) is a commercial Java EE-based Enterprise 2.0 collaboration and knowledge management tool produced by Jive Software. It was first released as "Clearspace" in 2006, then renamed SB ...

for its professional networking site, milBook;

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...

for its online encyclopedia, milWiki; and

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

for its news aggregator, milWire. In June 2010, milSuite added milTube to its offering. The site was intended to provide a professional alternative to

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

, with videos focused on military training and education. At the time of its launch, the deputy director for the Army's MilTech Solutions office, which produces milSuite, stated milTube will cater to a “more targeted audience to communicate on official efense Departmentbusiness.” The next piece to join the milSuite brand of social media site imitators was Eureka. Launched in July 2012 as part of the milBook application but designed to feel independent, Eureka uses the concept of ideation to host discussions with the intent to bring about revolutionary solutions; like improved training, better ways to secure mobile devices, or any other problems that plague the military and hamper efficiency. In 2013, milSuite executed a major release with updates to its core products and a change in the application lineup, re-purposing its WordPress site as milWire. milWire is designed to be an aggregator of news and information from across milSuite and the public web. It allows users to share original short blog posts or content from anywhere across the other milSuite sites into specific user and topic-based feeds, which other users of milSuite can then subscribe to or follow. 2013 was also the year milSuite added milUniversity as an online training tool. On May 23, 2018, milSuite executed a major update and migration from their traditional hosting environment to the DISA milCloud environment. The migration allowed milSuite to be more agile as a service with the ability to scale as necessary to support a growing number of users while simultaneously keeping maintenance costs low.

Creation and Usage

The milSuite product line grew out of a need for new knowledge management solutions for an Army workforce at

Fort Monmouth Fort Monmouth is a former installation of the Department of the Army in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The post is surrounded by the communities of Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport, New Jersey, and is located about from the Atlantic Ocean. Th ...

, N.J., which was expected to lose a significant number of personnel due to the announcement of

Base Realignment and Closure, 2005 The 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission preliminary list was released by the United States Department of Defense on May 13, 2005. It was the fifth Base Realignment and Closure ("BRAC") proposal generated since the process was created in ...

. Original use of an internal MediaWiki and internal WordPress site from 2007-08 focused on building and updating living knowledge archives, the expertise of departing leaders and the specialized knowledge of subject matter experts. milBook was launched in the fall of 2009 to provide "a centralized location for Army personnel to discuss military topics that were previously done through potentially insecure emails, chats, wikis and blogs." The former, stand-alone MediaWiki and WordPress offerings were named milWiki and milBlog and joined with milBook to create milSuite. The military has leveraged milSuite for several significant collaborative efforts since its launch. The

United States Army Training and Doctrine Command The United States Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is a major command of the United States Army headquartered at Fort Eustis, Virginia. It is charged with overseeing training of Army forces and the development of operational doctrine. ...

begin using milWiki in 2010 to create online versions of field manuals in a wiki format, that could be contributed to by any soldier. The

United States Army Forces Command United States Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) is the largest United States Army command. It provides expeditionary, regionally engaged, campaign-capable land forces to combatant commanders. Headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, FORSCOM con ...

partnered with milSuite in 2011 to develop a customized Virtual Training Portal for Soldiers using milWiki and milTube. In 2013, milBook was a key component in an initiative by the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

Air Mobility Command Air Mobility Command (AMC) is a major command (MAJCOM) of the U.S. Air Force. It is headquartered at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, east of St. Louis, Missouri. Air Mobility Command was established on 1 June 1992, and was formed from elements ...

to host and conduct conferences and courses virtually as a cost-cutting measure. On October 3, 2016, the Army Office of Business Transformation launched Army Ideas for Innovation (AI2) as a replacement for the Army Suggestion Program (ASP), which was suspended in 2013. Created at the direction of the

United States Under Secretary of the Army The United States under secretary of the Army is the second-highest-ranking civilian official of the United States Department of the Army, serving directly under the United States Secretary of the Army. The Secretary and Under Secretary, togethe ...

, AI2 is a crowd-source innovation program built on the milSuite platform. The

launched its own idea submission site for Airmen on milSuite in May 2017. The website, which directly supported Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein’s Focus Area number one – Revitalizing Air Force Squadrons, encouraged Airmen to address specific topics presented in the form of challenges and to help identify the best ideas by voting, commenting and sharing. milSuite was featured as a secure alternative to public social media for Department of Defense collaboration at the

Defense Information School The Defense Information School (DINFOS) is a United States Department of Defense (DoD) school located at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. DINFOS fulfills the Department of Defense's need for an internal corps of professional journalists, broadcast ...

's 2017 Social Media Workshop.

Contributors

milSuite is accessible to active military personnel, DoD civilian employees, and contractor employees, representing the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The community, which includes participants at all levels of employment and military rank - from government interns to general officers - registered its 350,000th user in September 2013.

Awards and recognition

In 2009, milWiki received a Category III: Technology Dimension Army Knowledge Management Award, at the Army's annual LandwarNet Conference, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. At the following year's LandWarNet conference, in 2010, milBook claimed the top Army Knowledge Management award. milWiki was the supporting application for the U.S. Training and Doctrine Command's (TRADOC) U.S. Army Field Manual Wiki project, which was recognized by the White House administration in 2010 as an

Open Government Initiative The Open Government Initiative is an effort by the administration of President of the United States Barack Obama to "reatean unprecedented level of openness in Government.". The directive starting this initiative was issued on January 20, 2009, Ob ...

. In 2011,

Government Computer News A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...

named milSuite one of its honorable mentions in the program's 24th Annual agency awards for information technology initiatives.

Historic MilestonesInformation obtained from a post made by an official milSuite administrator.

* Army Team C4ISR Blog and Wiki launched: February 2008 and June 2008 * milWiki wins Army Knowledge Management Award: August 2009 * milBook launched birth of milSuite brand: October 2009 * milTube Launched: June 2010 * milBook wins Army Knowledge Management Award: August 2010 * milWiki Recognized as a White House Open Government Initiative: September 2010 * milsuite.mil address memo from DONCIO: December 2010 * Expansion to other services and use of the enterprise directory (milSuite Enterprise Edition): February 2011 * GCN named milSuite one of its honorable mentions in the program's 24th Annual agency awards: October 2011 * CAC Only milSuite: December 2011 * milSuite registers 200,000 member: March 2012 * GCDS: June 2012 * Gold Master Trusted Sites: July 2012 * eureka launched: July 2012 * DA CIO/G6 support (Funding and direct): September 2012 * milWire Launched: January 2013 * Army/DISA Direction from Army/DISA day to move forward with partnership: January 2013 * Army Professional Forums migrate to milBook: March 2013 * Original milUniversity to support milSuite products was released: March 2013 * milSuite was realigned into the EIEMA Domain under US Army CIO/G-6: May 2013 * milSuite registers 350,000 member: September 2013 * DISA DECC FOC: October 2013 * First milSuite-DCO Virtual Conference: November 2013 * 500K user: January 2015 * COOP IOC: June 2015 * Initial DoD Mobility (sent icons and ready with products): September 2015 * milSuite IATO: 27 August 2015 * milSuite ATO: 27 January 2016 * AI2 becomes a

Program of Record The processes of government procurement in the United States enable federal, state and local government bodies in the country to acquire goods, services (including construction), and interests in real property. In fiscal year 2019, the US Federal ...

: 14 December 16 * CSAF Launches CSAF Revitalizing Squadrons: 15 May 17 * SMA Announces AI2: 9 June 17 * milSurvey Released: 30 June 17 * milUniversity Released: 30 June 17 * 1M user registered for milSuite since DoD wide milSuite was released in 2011: 19 December 17

References