By: Steve Slosser

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The Department of Defense (DOD) Repositories Working Group is led by the Joint ADL Co-Lab in Orlando, Florida, and has the mission develop a common approach to interfacing and interoperating with learning repositories owned by the military services.  This Group consists of representatives from the Joint ADL Co-Lab, Academic ADL Co-Lab, ADL Co-Lab, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, National Guard and the Joint Services.  The initial Group was designated by the Total Force Advanced Distributed Learning Action Team (TFADLAT) in September 2002.  Non-service specific DOD organizations also participate, such as Defense Acquisition University (DAU) and the American Forces Information Service (AFIS).

In October of 2003, the group released the DOD Repositories Use Cases Version 1.0 document to describe use cases for DOD learning repositories and related systems.  The goal was to understand how DOD learning repositories and systems are used so that a system that spans across the military services and other DOD organizations can be defined for managing, searching and finding learning resources and content.  This document lays the foundation of today’s efforts to define the DOD Learning Service Architecture that provides the high-level functionality from which a DOD system can be constructed.  A secondary goal of this effort is to identify the programs and initiatives currently in progress that can provide the needed functionality.  Promising technical enterprises include the establishment of the Common Access Card (CAC) as the standards for DOD authentication, and the adoption of the Handle system for identification of digital resources and resolution of their locations.

The eCore project, a parallel effort taking place within the Joint ADL Co-Lab, is addressing the low-level functionality necessary to implement a geographically, distributed learning repository system.  While the Learning Service Architecture defines the external functionality of the nodes, eCore defines the network topography and the lower level functionality that binds the nodes together.  The near-term goal is to create a virtual prototype of the envisioned network from which to conduct testing of the protocols and services.  This activity is considered necessary because lack of attention to these critical details is believed to be responsible for unsuccessful attempts to create similar federated repository systems in the past.

For further information refer to the DoD Repositories Use Cases document in the Downloads section.



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