The Department of Defense’s Chief Data Officer Weighs In On Data Management

Key Takeaways

• DOD’s new data strategy provides an overarching set of principles and objectives for DOD to improve its management and organization of data.
• The strategy calls for components and military departments to publish implementation plans for their own data strategies. Implementation plans will need to be guided by the principles and goals outlined in the DOD’s overarching strategy.
• DOD is going to need significant industry assistance realizing its goals.

Officials from the Department of Defense have in recent years expressed a desire to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning for both combat and non-combat operations. At the same time the department has begun pivoting toward the cloud and high-speed networks. Both of these trends have generated a growing focus on data as the key element in the DOD’s technology modernization. Defense components and the three military departments (MILDEPS) that make up the DOD have responded by establishing data governance bodies, publishing data strategies, and, in most cases, appointing Chief Data Officers to help design policies that will make data management more efficient and effective. The one piece missing in all of this has been an overarching data strategy for the department that sets out guiding principles and objectives. The publication of the DOD’s first enterprise data strategy in October 2020 fills that gap by mapping out the challenges facing the DOD and the areas it needs to address to overcome them.

DOD’s Data Challenges     

The DOD faces numerous challenges when it comes to making effective use of its data, but the new enterprise data strategy identifies three areas in particular where the department must improve as rapidly as possible. These include policy/guidance that enables enterprise data management, tackling legacy systems and engineering new systems for interoperability, and addressing skill gaps in the workforce. 

Guiding Principles

DOD’s management of data must follow eight principles in order to ensure that all data-centric efforts across DOD are effective. These include:

1. Recognizing data is a strategic asset.

2. Introducing collective data stewardship accountable through the entire data lifecycle.

3. Ensuring that all data is collected, used, and stored ethically.

4. Enabling electronic collection of data at the point of creation.

5. Making data available for use by all authorized individuals and non-person entities through appropriate mechanisms.

6. Establishing data sets for A.I. training and algorithmic models.

7. Addressing ethical concerns in data collection, sharing, use, rapid data integration as well as minimization of any sources of unintended bias.

8. Ensuring that systems are designed for compliance with DOD data policies.

Getting to DOD’s desired state is going to require effort on a number of levels. The first is technology architecture. Enterprise cloud and data lakes are necessary to enable the storage and computation of data. Data must be interoperable across systems to make this approach truly effective. Enabling interoperability will require that DOD introduce a common standard for data formatting and labeling. Data locked in siloed systems will not be useful in the new paradigm. Ensuring the proliferation of standards will require rigorous data governance practices policed by responsible officials, such as component and MILDEP Chief Data Officers. Lastly, DOD needs to address weakness in its workforce. Training will be required to ensure employees rely on data-driven decision making, which in turn means that those employees will need to know how to use analytical tools to do their jobs.

The one thing that DOD’s new Data Strategy makes clear is how vast and varied its data management requirements are. In order to realize its goals the DOD will need the help of industry in every conceivable facet of its operations. Vendors should therefore be on the look-out for data management implementation plans called for in the department’s new strategy.