WASHINGTON \u2014 The Army and Air Force are adjusting how they manage the data they create to ensure they\u2019re collecting information that is most important for future battles. The problem? There\u2019s a lot of data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking at the C4ISRNET Conference on Wednesday, top data strategists from the two branches stressed the importance of breaking down siloes so components have access to \u201cauthoritative\u201d data that can provide strong insights for future war-fighting under the Defense Department\u2019s concept of a connected force across domains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s part of the governance structure we\u2019ve had to set up,\u201d said David Markowitz, the Army chief data officer, who took over the job in November last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He noted the Army\u2019s four core mission areas: war fighting, enterprise IT, business and intelligence. Under each of those, the service is appointing mission area data officers \u201cto understand how different domains work within that mission area,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service has also named data stewards in those areas to identify authoritative data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo they can identify what is really important that\u2019s shareable across the Army, and then what are the curation standards [to do a] quality control on it,\u201d Markowitz said, adding that there are data managers with other responsibilities as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a big Army [and] certain areas are more mature than others,\u201d Markowitz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To demonstrate the size of the task, Markowitz noted that the Army\u2019s human resources center has a \u201cseries\u201d of legacy applications that have 800,000 data elements. Just 5,000 could be considered authoritative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a huge data terrain simplification,\u201d Markowitz said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur job right now is to make that visible, accessible, understandable and trusted to simplify that data landscape so we can focus on that data that\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Air Force CDO Eileen Vidrine said her service is building a similar data management structure to ensure it is collecting the most useful information. She highlighted the focus of the Air Force data lab on \u201centerprise data opportunities\u201d across different use cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat we find is every one of these use cases tend to ask for similar datasets. It has really helped us get laser-focused … as we talk about improving the quality of our data, where we can make those targeted investments to show the largest return,\u201d Vidrine said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Markowitz and Vidrine are responsible for overseeing their services\u2019 implementation of the Defense Department\u2019s enterprise data strategy, which is centered on enabling joint war fighting. That concept, in which data will pass between services regardless of domain, requires not just overcoming technological hurdles, but also tackling cultural barriers. Enlisted airmen and soldiers aren\u2019t the only ones who need to think differently about the importance of data; senior leaders need to change their mindsets too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s \u201cnot just how to use and optimize your data, but who are your data customers so that you can actually not just be using data to inform your insights, but to make sure that you\u2019re thinking about how we can use it as a big \u2018E\u2019 enterprise,\u201d Vidrine said. \u201cThose culture change pieces are critical for the long-term movement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The services are structuring themselves to give soldiers and airmen access to more data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":31958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":36,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"4":{"categories":["daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"daily-news-roundup"},"5":{"categories":["daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"daily-news-roundup"},"10":{"categories":["daily-news-roundup","newsletters","land","air"],"primary_category":"daily-news-roundup"}}},"categories":[7,60,106,29,36,32,25],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3252],"class_list":["post-20653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-battlefield-tech","category-c4isrnet-conference","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-it-networks-battlefield-tech","category-newsletters","category-show-reporter"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"WF77SIPGKFG2ZOZL7C4ONEWZMQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/show-reporter\/c4isrnet-conference\/2021\/04\/21\/swimming-in-data-army-and-air-force-make-sure-theyre-capturing-the-best-info\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n