ISFAC: The Warrior Gateway Project

ISFAC: The Warrior Gateway Project- I thought you all may be interested in peeking into this and inputting while this is in the inception process.

 

___________________________________________

 

 

Let me introduce myself, my name is Devin Holmes and I work for a non-profit in Washington, DC called Business Executives for National Security (BENS – www.bens.org).  As you explore other options to ASY, I wanted to make you aware of a project that I have been tasked with leading, The Warrior Gateway Project.   

 

By way of background, former VA Secretary Peake and JCS Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen asked the Veterans Innovation Center and BENS to help identify how transitioning service members and veterans can best find and access resources that are available to them at all levels - federal, state, county and local.  We then developed a growing coalition of interested organizations to accomplish this who are all providing pro bono assistance with the project.  These organizations include the USO, Gallup, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Google and other entities that are significantly committed to helping this project come together.

 

The Warrior Gateway Project is designed to help veterans and their families by providing an extremely user-friendly means to identify, explore and access resources (like yours), as well as assess the usefulness of those resources as it relates to their need.  This will take the form of a universally accessible web-based portal with characteristics that we are currently developing. Our intent is for it to become a national capability that can serve as a network of networks.  This project, and the resulting portal, is designed to operate as a non-profit and to be free of charge for the military community to use and for the service providers (like you) to be listed on it.

 

Our desire is for it to be a 100% inclusive portal and to aggregate the plethora of information already contained in various directories around the web.  As such, we plan to work directly with service providers, like yourself, to provide a platform for reaching and engaging with your target audiences and potential donors.  To accomplish our aggregation strategy, we are also working to create partnerships with large directories and organizations tasked with reaching veterans such as the National Association of State Directors of Veterans Affairs (NASDVA - www.nasdva.net) and the National Resource Directory (www.nationalresourcedirectory.org), with whom we have already begun a dialog.  

 

 

Scheduled for an initial launch in late 2009, the Warrior Gateway Project will:

 

*         Improve access by the military community to services and by the service providers to feedback from the people they serve. The Warrior Gateway Project will organize thousands of programs and services under portal, www.warriorgateway.org, providing the military community with a one-stop, searchable resource for locating, contacting and reviewing private and not-for-profit programs.

 

*         Improve effectiveness by enabling the military community to rate services. This critical feedback helps users find the most effective programs while providing the information necessary for providers to improve quality while identifying service gaps, going beyond the multitude of existing service directories.

 

*         Facilitate communication by fostering online communities.  Through the Warrior Gateway, users can engage with each other or link to other social networks-expanding their support network regardless of geography.  Service providers can connect directly with individuals who need or have used their services, as well as other providers. This creates a dialogue essential to identifying needs not currently being met, improving existing services and developing best practices. Service providers will also be able to connect with donors who provide the funding to start and sustain programs.

 

*         Enhance and expand services critical to helping veterans and their families reintegrate back into their communities.  Warriorgateway.org will also serve as a portal to access veteran-focused job seeking and education services essential to making the transition to a post military career.

 

 

 

We have launched our project blog this week and soliciting more feedback about the project there but I do have just a few questions that I would like your feedback on this week:

 

1)       What are you initial reactions to this project?

 

2)      What would you want to get out of this portal that could be helpful to your organization?

 

3)      If veterans were able to provide feedback, both qualitatively and quantitatively on the services they are receiving, how could your organization benefit from that information?

 

As mentioned, our newly launched blog can be found at http://www.warriorgateway.org/blog/ where I will be writing about the project vision, our progress to date and where we will be soliciting beta testers once our prototype is up and running.  Please follow us there to keep up to date on the project and don't hesitate to contact me directly if you have any other questions or comments.  I look forward to chatting with you soon.

 

Thank you,

Devin

 

 

Devin B. Holmes

The Warrior Gateway Project

Business Executives for National Security

www.bens.org

T: 202-481-1145

E: dholmes@bens.org