Case Study: Department of Defence of Australia achieves a secure, high‑engagement military social network with Sitecore

How the Department of Defence built its own social network

The Department of Defence of Australia needed a secure, user-friendly way to boost recruitment, surface hard-to-find skills and improve engagement across more than 70,000 personnel. Working with Sitecore and leveraging the Sitecore Experience Platform, the organisation set out to build ForceNet — a mobile‑responsive, military social network that combines professional profiles, job-matching and social features in a single, secure environment.

Sitecore delivered ForceNet (backed by Microsoft SQL Server, Apache SOLR and IIS), enabling self-declared skills, personalised service-based themes, events management and easy administration. The result was rapid, organic uptake — from an 800-member pilot to over 6,000 members in nine weeks and more than 6,500 today (15,000 projected by year‑end) — with unit administrators spending less than an hour per week managing content, minimal training requests and demonstrably improved skills discovery and event coordination. Sitecore’s platform and support were credited as key to these measurable gains.

Department of Defence of Australia

Iain Spence

Head Cadet, Reserve and Employer Support Division