A military network

A fascinating idea:

The Canadian military is considering developing its own version of social-networking applications such as Facebook and Twitter to help soldiers communicate and improve teamwork in the increasingly networked environment of modern warfare.

The research and development arm of the Department of National Defence plans to hire a contractor to research and develop social-networking software for military use, with a view toward developing an internal prototype by as early as next March.

"Virtual social networking web applications (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn) represent a dramatic change in the way individuals and groups connect, and in the way information is disseminated via the Internet," state recently released tender documents.

The Canadian Forces are "interested in the usefulness and feasibility of implementing web-based virtual social networking in the military domain, where information sharing and locating sources of expertise is essential to interoperability," state the documents, noting that such tools would be especially useful where team members are physically separate and unfamiliar with each other.

The article is mostly well-penned, but this paragraph misses the mark:

The push to jump on the social-networking bandwagon represents the latest twist in the Canadian Forces' sometimes ambivalent stance toward such technologies. In the past, the Defence Department has warned Canadian troops not to post photos and other information on Facebook and other websites, arguing that such postings could endanger soldiers and their families, according to a memo obtained last year by the CBC.

The reason DND is working on its own site is to keep such information private. The PERSEC risks are real. There are bad people in this world, and a good number of them particularly dislike Canadian troops.

If the department was just "jumping on the social-networking bandwagon" as the article's author puts it, they'd just remove the restrictions on using Facebook/MySpace/etc rather than spend money building their own version.

No, the whole point of this effort is to reap the benefits of social networking without incurring the associated risks, and that means developing a secure site.

The Globe & Mail also weighs in with another good point:

The military already uses popular virtual applications Second Life and iLink for training, but this is the Forces' first foray into social networking.

The CAE report noted that units and personnel are constantly shuffled, changes that can be difficult for even long-serving members of the Forces to track, but social networking could ease those troubles, serving as a virtual Rolodex.

Getting up to speed on military operations and the who's who of a unit can be a stumbling block for new recruits, but the report's authors highlighted the merits of social networking as a training tool.

“[It could provide] them with information passed on by their predecessor, as well as provide various levels of information on the operation and on other team members.”

One of the biggest structural issues in a large bureaucracy like DND is striking a balance between open communication - so all those who have something to contribute to a given issue can do just that - and information overload - where the individual member is bombarded with information that's not relevant to his or her expertise (cc'd on a million memos, for example). Social networking allows those lines of communication to open and close organically, rather than along imposed organizational lines.

I'll be interested to see where this goes.