Army awards DKO contract

The Army has awarded a task order worth as much as $267 million to Northrop Grumman to develop Defense Knowledge Online (DKO), a project to consolidate the different military-service portals into one entry point.The task order was awarded under the Air Force’s enterprisewide Network-Centric Solutions vehicle.Under the terms of the task order, Northrop Grumman’s Information Technology unit will provide systems integration, application development, technology evolution, and operations and maintenance, growing the DKO solution from 1.8 million users across the services to as many as 8 million or more users across the federal government.Plans for DKO have been in development for some time, but funding limitations delayed the award. The Army Knowledge Online portal will be the foundation for DKO. The Navy last November announced it had placed a moratorium on creating and updating Web sites and portals, in large part to aid the service’s eventual migration to DKO.Earlier this year, DKO program officials outlined the services to be offered initially, including universal directory services, such as white pages with contact information for all account holders; limited single-sign-on capabilities; group-based access control and contracting; and common access card/public-key infrastructure.The task order has a base period of one year with four, six-month extensions. Initial work will be performed at Fort Belvoir, Va., an undisclosed Maryland location and in southwest Asia.