Posted on Oct 28, 2014
Is anyone else completely frustrated by the online aspect of military service?
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After another hour-plus long war with my home computer to get my CAC reader working with the new EES I was inspired to make this post.
The Army (and military in general, I suspect) has utterly failed to create a usable, intuitive IT network. It's appalling. From AKO to the myriad of online tracking systems to the horrible training programs with completely counter-intuitive menu systems, it seems that the Army cannot create a system that makes sense.
The amount of working hours wasted by these systems probably rivals the amount spent on actual training. I spend hours each week fighting these systems in one way or another. When Soldiers need to get online training done they flood the post library- but guess what? Every other company on post is doing the same thing, so the line is out the door and they don't get enough time to do SERE 100 or AT Level 1, and figure out how to print out the cert.
How often have you spent five minutes searching all over the page for a link to print out a cert? Or wasted time backing up and deleting emails to make room for something in your outbox to send (512MB of storage in enterprise)? Or tried and failed to download a TM from APD because of some ridiculous account-based system that can never let you sign up? Or reset your password for the 15th time on AKO to something with two capital letters, two lower case letters, two numbers, two special characters, two hieroglyphics, two Greek letters, and a zodiac sign?
Why can't the Army get this right? AKO was a try (I was about to write nice try but my hands couldn't physically type that). They need to have one streamlined system that handles online training, publications, records, medical and everything else. Hire Google to do it. Hell, hire Apple. Anything would be better than what we have now.
The Army (and military in general, I suspect) has utterly failed to create a usable, intuitive IT network. It's appalling. From AKO to the myriad of online tracking systems to the horrible training programs with completely counter-intuitive menu systems, it seems that the Army cannot create a system that makes sense.
The amount of working hours wasted by these systems probably rivals the amount spent on actual training. I spend hours each week fighting these systems in one way or another. When Soldiers need to get online training done they flood the post library- but guess what? Every other company on post is doing the same thing, so the line is out the door and they don't get enough time to do SERE 100 or AT Level 1, and figure out how to print out the cert.
How often have you spent five minutes searching all over the page for a link to print out a cert? Or wasted time backing up and deleting emails to make room for something in your outbox to send (512MB of storage in enterprise)? Or tried and failed to download a TM from APD because of some ridiculous account-based system that can never let you sign up? Or reset your password for the 15th time on AKO to something with two capital letters, two lower case letters, two numbers, two special characters, two hieroglyphics, two Greek letters, and a zodiac sign?
Why can't the Army get this right? AKO was a try (I was about to write nice try but my hands couldn't physically type that). They need to have one streamlined system that handles online training, publications, records, medical and everything else. Hire Google to do it. Hell, hire Apple. Anything would be better than what we have now.
Posted 10 y ago
Responses: 1
Tracking on all CPT (Join to see). We need to get better at this. If it is AKO, JKO, ALMS, the sites at the Signal School, etc, there have always been issues. It is either access issues, validation issues, sessions timed out, issues printing certificates, you name it, we need to find a better way. By no means do I have the answer, but I definitely feel your pain and frustration.
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