Army Times online has been asking for comments from readers about the good and bad things pertaining to Army Knowledge Online (AKO) which is THE (all caps intentional) online portal for Army personnel...all components including those retired. I have my own opinion which I choose not to share with Army Times, but I will do so here for what it's worth...zero actually.
In a few words...I don't like AKO. Even if I were still on active duty I'm not sure I'd like it. Why? It's a pain in the butt to use and navigate. Security has to be paramount, so changing passwords frequently with all sorts of cryptic criteria is demanded. For us retired or those without a CAC card, logging in can be a slow process, and there are security questions to be answered. Plus, even though I am often invited to view certain areas, when I try to do so I am told that I am not on a secure network...sorry...buzz off.
When AKO was first introduced I said to myself...cool, now I can have a "dot mil" email account. But that was on top of my work and personal email accounts, so AKO sort of sat accumulating mail, which I never seemed to read. Important stuff like the Army telling me my AKO password was to soon expire and to get with it. Not reading such emails in a timely manner meant that the next time I tried to login I was told my password had expired...and to follow these instructions to update it. Half an hour later I was logged in...whoopee.
So, for me AKO serves no purpose. But, I can see where it might be worthwhile were I still in uniform. However, from what I've gathered by reading Army Times, a large percentage of Army folks don't like AKO either.
