In May, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks released the 鈥淐reating Data Advantage Memo鈥� to wide applause in the Department of Defense (DOD) and industry.聽
The memo said that as the nation's allies and adversaries race to gain advantage聽through the use of聽advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), and as joint all-domain operations become increasingly dependent on improved data operations, DOD needs a quantum leap in its ability to enable improved decision making from the battlespace to the boardroom.
The memo asserted that in order to treat data as a strategic asset, senior DOD leaders must ensure that their data is visible, accessible, understandable, linked, trustworthy, interoperable, and secure.
The vision laid out by Hicks鈥痠s a solid plan, but聽there聽are several key challenges that senior leaders鈥痠n DOD鈥痬ust grapple with when embarking on a data-transformation journey. These include:聽
- Costly IT platform development and maintenance
- Disorganized, unknown, or inaccessible data assets
- Complex data management and security rules
- A perceived lack of聽internal聽organizational talent or culture
Technology Is Easy鈥擯rocess Is Hard
With the abundance of industry marketing material on cloud-native services, big-data technologies, vertically integrated solutions, and more, it can be difficult for senior DOD leaders to distinguish between what聽is hype聽and what is real. Today, the gap in functionalities between tools used for data visualization or between tools for data wrangling or data governance, are shrinking. These technology gaps and differences should not be driving DOD leader鈥檚 platform selection.聽
Furthermore, technology today is really table stakes. You cannot simply implement the DOD data strategy for your organization out of the box, regardless of the tool. Key differentiators are repeatable processes for acquiring,聽structuring,聽and聽securely exposing data so it is discoverable, and the ability to publish data to users so that it is understandable.聽聽
Advana as a Potential Solution
In today鈥檚 world, the ability to avoid managing yet another IT asset is both a strategic and financial advantage.聽Fortunately, there are existing solutions in place that give DOD organizations access to modern data technology.聽One shared-service solution to consider as the baseline of your聽analytics聽journey is the Advana聽enterprise聽data聽platform, which is led by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense Comptroller.聽Today, Advana supports more than 20,000 users across DoD with more than 70 data products (e.g.,聽dashboards, web applications, and predictive models) from 14 functional areas, such as financial management, readiness, logistics, and acquisition analytics.
Advana offers a managed data service with mature, auditable data-governance processes aligned to the DOD data strategy that can help accelerate return-on-investment for analytics projects. Advana is built using open architecture principles, and is entirely government-led.聽Finally, it is optimized for multi-tenancy, meaning that the Advana support team handles difficult parts like data governance, infrastructure, and聽security, while your team can focus on using world-class tools to create value from your data.
Conclusion
Curating, cataloging, and securely exposing data to those who need it is the first step toward creating a data advantage for the DOD. Considering the urgency of this need, it is incredibly important for leaders to understand the difficulty of the task at hand. Reusing existing solutions, extending the successful work of others, and building a better ecosystem for sharing data is the simplest and most reasonable way forward.
