Abstract
This paper defines a roadmap that military information management has been following mainly in business and supportive domains of military affairs. Paper describes a seven stage evolutionary path from print based information management to intelligent information. These seven phases are connected with paths of evolution, shortcutting and downgrading provided with examples. The military information management roadmap is defined to help Enterprise Architecture work in defining current situation and journey to possible end state.Introduction
Military Information and Communication Technology has evolved through decades in keeping the separation between networking, computing, information security and information management. Now evolution is reaching towards more convergent ICT structures, and there is a special awareness needed to include these requirements into military ICT strategies. Many enterprise architecture models describe information
This paper is a part of series of papers that are describing the roadmaps of each layer of CIT technology applicable in military support and mission networks as pictured in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Orientation of military ICT domains i.e. networks
The paper focuses on military support and mission networks like USA’s APAN , NIPRNET , SIPRNET or NATO’s AMN and FMN . This paper is not explaining Internet or evolution in governmental extranet nor any tactical military networks.
The series of studies illustrate a major technical evolutionary path for each layer of technology and describes some shortcuts that military organisations have experiencing both when revolutionizing their information management culture or being driven back with negative forces of their culture. This paper provides tools for enterprise architects to do strategic diagnosis using evolutionary roadmap where the current situation can be assessed, and the possible future state may be defined.
Orientation to Military ICT roadmaps
There is a possibility to create a description of the general evolution of Information and Communications Technology, ICT in military support and mission information environments. A generic evolution is depicted with four aligned roads of Networking, Computing, IT securing and Information Management in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Roads of military ICT evolution
This paper is describing the sub-roadmap for military information or content management in more detail. See the other papers of this series for a description of all roads on the ICT roadmap.
Digital Information may be divided roughly into structured and unstructured information based on its organization. Unstructured information does not have a pre-defined data model, or it is not organized in a pre-defined manner. Unstructured information requires a human being to understand it as it is presented mainly as text, audio or video. Structured information is organized according to the pre-determined data model, or it is annotated using an ontological taxonomy. It can be understood both by human and machine. The study of structured information in a military environment is covered elsewhere in the series of ICT roadmaps.
Description of evolutionary path for Information Management
The information management in the military environment has been defined by its mean of storing. First information was printed on paper and bind to books or documents which were stored on shelves of a library or archives. The management of information was using bibliographies to publish information on information and physical items (i.e. books or documents) in controlling distribution. Processes were supported by manual flows of paper.With automated data processing systems, information was captured in digital format, arranged in files, stored in folders and managed by distributing files through email. The management was using physical access to systems, encryption and restrictions in access to folders. The processes were defined by the functions that were using information systems.
In the cyber environment, the writing or drawing in information production has been first supplemented and then substituted using audio and video. A human being as a primary information provider is gradually substituted by machines which sense their environment and provide both structured and unstructured information in vast magnitude i.e. big data. The volume, velocity, and variety of this new data have gone beyond the ability of legacy computers to process small data for humans from it. The methods of managing big data cannot be based on material items anymore.
The following sections are explaining the evolutionary stages in the management of unstructured information in a military environment as per their medium.
File
When personal computing did gain the footage in military official information management, the paper was converted to file and book to the folder. First, they were stored in data mediums like tape, floppy disks, compact discs, memory sticks, etc. Sharing information is based on delivering these mediums containing files and folders. The military is tackling the issue of non-connected systems by transferring information between systems via manual data mediums (like USB sticks or DVD) . The personal level and manual information management expose to risks of data leaks. In the largest military data leak 2010, almost 400 000 classified logs from Iraq War were published by Wikileaks.In the Finnish Defence Forces, the first file sharing content management became utilised through 1980’s when personal computers were introduced as common data processing entities. One of the first command posts was using Nokia manufactured PC’s and floppy disks back in 1985.
Storage
Further, these files and folders were stored in hard disks and accessed via file management structures (for example FAT, NFS) - first in single PC’s and then increasingly networked storages. The distribution of files between storages was first done by File Transfer Protocol, FTP or via Email (mainly SMTP).The more current ways of managing and distributing files are cloud based. Besides the legacy storage area networks, the storage may also be organized in converged where all computing components are integrated as one computing package. The other end for cloud computing storage is to use hyper-converged infrastructure, where a lot of standard attached storages are virtualized using software defined storage.
The cloud-stored files are accessed via different means. Most common file sharing platforms are for example MS Sharepoint, OneDrive, Dropbox, BitTorrent, Netflix.
In the Finnish Defence Forces, the first Email service (Vaxmail) within a deployed force was provided 1994. Defence Forces wide Email and file sharing service (Esikuntajarjestelma -95) were implemented in 1995. It also included collaborative consumption pages as a private point of sales.
Web page
Publishing information on pages has been there since newspapers. A digital page was introduced in 1980. The method is composed of hypertext (HTML) structured page, Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to provide an address to HTML page, Hypertext Transfer Protocol to provide session between page and viewer, and a web browser to present the content of the digital page to a viewer.The military is challenged with this publish and pull method of content management since the culture of “need to know” requires predefined detailed access rights. The MS SharePoint has come one of the most used platforms for both files and web pages (U.S, NATO). There are also other platforms in use as IBM WebSphere (FIN, GER) or Open Source based (FRA, U.S). Most of the operational planning is done via portals and orders are both prepared and shared as HTML-pages.
In the Finnish Defence Forces, the first Domino portal was published 1995 and WebSphere Portal 2007.
Social Media
Sharing information with social media means has exploded in private life where Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter gained popularity. The military has been following this trend in an Internet environment. In 2007, the first military accounts started appearing in social media. In 2009, US started first plans for exploiting the social media.The whole change from the one-way publish-pull policy of early Web toward more interacting and collaborating web is called Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is defined by social networking, video sharing, web applications and collaborative consumption. Military are using enterprise social media tools as part of their content management platforms e.g. SharePoint and WebSphere.
In the Finnish Defence Forces, the first force wide collaboration toolset was published 2010 which included voice, chat, whiteboard and meeting management.
Semantic Web Information
The next generation of markup Web is called semantic or sometimes Web 3.0. This means that information is not referred as a page, but the basic unit is a sentence or word that defines the subject, predicate, and object. This language makes all unstructured data readable by both humans and machines. The semantic web uses Resource Description Framework (RDF) to describe information, taxonomies, and interchangeability features. The Web Ontology Language (OWL) describes ontologies and data syntax is described in Extensible Markup Language (XML). Queries are done via SPARQL.Most of the military Open Source Intelligence systems have been using semantic structures in categorising events extracted from data flows on Internet since 2005. Some of the information integration and big data applications in military Enterprise Resource Management have been using semantic models to exchange data.
In the Finnish Defence Forces, the first Battle Management System based on semantic knowledge model was introduced 2010 and 2015 it was rolled out for the training of conscript troops.
Intelligent Web Information
The future generation of managing “unstructured” information may be based on research done under the title of Web Intelligence or Web wisdom. It concerns mainly of using artificial intelligence as meta-component of all information. Each piece of information thus possesses some program to enable different ways of processing data.One critical for information is to recognize the context where it is required to use. The context or situation can be defined by acquiring more information about the current and compare the situation with patterns of causality history to set the best approximation for intended purpose in using information.
The map of roads
With the previous seven stages of means in managing unstructured information, one may create a map for possible evolutionary roads that military organizations have journeyed in their attempt to develop information and content management. This roadmap is not based on maturity models and linear improvement. It is defined by a derivation of evolution model and tested with samples from military organizations. The roadmap for military information management evolution is illustrated in Figure 3. The main path is following the generic evolution: print – file – storage – page – some – semantic – intelligent. There are also alternative paths for accelerated evolution and reverse or downgrade. The following section provides examples of each journey.
Figure 3: Roadmap for military Information Management
Leaps, shortcuts and paths of downgrading on information management map of possible roads
Military organizations have followed the main path of information evolution. The Finnish Defence Forces have journeyed through all stages but the last as explained in the previous section. Within the Services of U.S. Armed Forces, there are all the stages of information management present at same time.There are two leaps in evolutionary path that may present challenges for information management culture. The first is a long cultural leap from individually possessed files in personal folders to publish knowledge in pages. From an individual viewpoint, one is first in control of his information by pushing it to others with means like email or access to shared folder. Then suddenly one is required to publish “his” information to everyone by a web page with no apparent control of who has access, reads the content and - worst of all - utilizes the information. From organization viewpoint, there is first hierarchical control on all sharing of official information. Then suddenly, the commander of armed forces comments publicly a blog writing that private soldier published on lessons learnt in the UNIFIL operation.
Secondly, there is an extended information structure leap from the huge amount of shared unstructured data (text, pictures, videos, personal sensor data) via enterprise social and other medias towards structuring everything in two additional dimensions: metadata and logic. The leap is imperative to enable artificial intelligence, machine learning, and improve man-machine collaboration. It has taken two years to the Internet to have 4 million domains using schema.org markup. The U.S DoD has been attempting to build horizontal integration of their enterprise data since 2008 by using standard ontologies.
There is a possibility to accelerate evolution by utilizing shortcuts and passing by some stages. The Land Command of Finnish Defence Forces jumped from file defined directly to the semantic defined battle management system. It required a coherent effort to change technology, ontology of information, processes, and behaviour of people at same time.
There is also change to downgrade the culture of information management since new technology is providing ways to get rid of old bottlenecks and friction. Search engines, active directory , and access to cloud-based file management have extended the file based content management within military enterprises hugely.
The 2010 leak of Iraq War Logs downgraded the U.S. and NATO attempts to share information more freely amongst warfighters. The access to sensitive information was constrained for a single defence analyst.
Examples of the usage of roadmap
The Enterprise architect may use a simple illustration in communicating the current situation of technology, information, business and culture of the military organization. With the same map, the architect may communicate the possible future states and probable challenges on the journey towards end state as illustrated in Figure 4.It might occur that even if technology enables huge improvements, the information management methods or organizational culture make them unrealistic.
Figure 4: Simple concept for enterprise architecture
With the information management roadmap, an enterprise architect may be able to show tangible the current situation of content management status. If the adapted strategy for information superiority is after utilizing the edge of technology, then semantic web and intelligent content may be the end state. This might be challenging to achieve, since the information management culture of an average society is somewhere around social media and that culture may prevent the full use of technology.
The more evolutionary strategy might adapt smaller steps and set goals to transform from files to web pages and allow the culture of the organization to develop more iteratively as illustrated in Figure 5.
Figure 5: an example of information management architecture analysis
The cultural stages of military organization in information management are explained in other papers of military knowledge management.
It might be that the technology or culture are not the biggest obstacles, but existing information security policy is preventing the development. Thus, there is a need to express the information management roadmap on the same map as the evolution of information security. For example in Figure 6, the domain based information security is preventing to achieve information management alike social media since there needs to be service based information security in place.
Figure 6: an example of interdependence between the layers of ICT infrastructure
See the previous papers for other ICT technical layers and their evolution in military use!
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