photo by Bill Hitchcock Program Executive Officer for Enterprise Information Systems Gary Winkler hands the new AKO⁄DKO Project Offices operating charter to Col. Earl Noble, incoming project manager as outgoing project manager Col. James Barrineau looks on during a June 27 ceremony held at Fort Belvoir.

AKO⁄DKO, the Army’s knowledge-based learning or-ganization, has been upgraded from a project directorship to board-selected project management.

Along with the new project management comes new leadership. In a ceremony officiated by Program Executive Officer for Enterprise Information Systems Gary Winkler, Col. James Barrineau, outgoing project director, handed leadership of AKO⁄DKO over to Col. Earl Noble, incoming project manager for AKO.

‘‘This is a testament to the importance of this program and paves the way to a defense-wide enterprise portal,” said Barrineau.

As the single point of entry into a robust and scalable knowledge management system, AKO is strategically changing the way the Army does business, he said.

‘‘Our vision for the future is to provide a single entry point that empowers knowledge dominance, ensures synchronization of resources, and aggressively enables situational awareness and operational security throughout the DoD community,” said Col. Noble, incoming project manager

He said that by enabling greater knowledge sharing among Army communities, AKO fosters improved decision dominance by commanders and business stewards in the battle space, organizations, and Army’s mission processes.

‘‘Eventually, we envision even extending access to the portal to our critical mission partners,” he said.

Although users will not see a change in AKO functionality as a result of the change in charter, the new charter enables AKO to move forward in its mission to transform the Army and DoD into a network-centric, knowledge-based force.

AKO began as a communication project in the Pentagon's General Officer Management Office in 1996 by then-Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis J. Reimer. At the time, Reimer used it to collaborate with other general officers via e-mail and online chat capability.