Quite Possibly The Worst Website Ever!

Worst Website Ever!

Yes I'm talking about you AKO! For those who don't know AKO (Army Knowledge On-Line) is the US Army's official in-house web-site. Advertised as the one-stop shop for all your professional information needs, AKO has got to be one of the most confoundingly difficult websites to find something on that I have ever seen.

What brought about this rant about something that the vast majority if the population hasn't seen, nor will see (with any luck) in their lifetime? Please allow me to explain.

Today I was searching for some information relevant to my job, school dates for a professional development course that my unit could send some soldiers to. That info is readily available on a site called ATRRS but, I am not the schools guy so I don't have access to that. I thought that maybe a simple query of the search engine on AKO might yield some results. 2 hours later I was still looking for information on even the course itself...forget the dates...just some info, maybe points of contact...but it was not to be. I am man enough to admit defeat. AKO beat me like a rented mule. If the designers of AKO set out to make it so confusing that even in the event of a password compromise nobody could find relevant information, consider yourself successful.

In a test I just conducted (1 minute ago) I entered the words "1st Cavalry Division" in the search engine block. Now logic would say I would get a link to the 1st Cavalry Division website at least somewhere near the top...well I'm here to tell you that it's not in the first 50 hits...now that's the kind of technology that makes us the best Army in the world.

I have a feeling I don't even want to know how much the Army has paid someone to develop this site. I could probably get a better website by going down to "The Android's Dungeon" and hiring some mouth breathing idiot wearing a Boba Fett t-shirt...but I wouldn't have gone through the competitive bidding process that ensures we will spend the most amount of money for the worst product in the known universe..."worst episode ever"