{"id":49631,"date":"2022-12-26T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2022\/12\/26\/qa-armys-jennifer-swanson-talks-data-mesh-and-digital-fluency\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:29:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:29:47","slug":"qa-armys-jennifer-swanson-talks-data-mesh-and-digital-fluency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/interviews\/2022\/12\/26\/qa-armys-jennifer-swanson-talks-data-mesh-and-digital-fluency\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Army\u2019s Jennifer Swanson talks data mesh and digital fluency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NASHVILLE, Tenn. \u2014 The prospect of conflict with China or Russia, two global powers that have long invested in military science and technology, is motivating the U.S. to push the digital envelope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To face this challenge, the U.S. Department of Defense is focused on artificial intelligence<\/a>, cybersecurity and other increasingly software-centric capabilities. And the tides of information generated by everyday, bureaucratic practices and countless military sensors in the field are proving to be the lifeblood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Army officials in November, on the heels of Project Convergence, a massive Joint All-Domain Command and Control experiment, said they are dealing with too much data, and that it needs wrangling quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C4ISRNET on Dec. 8 spoke to Jennifer Swanson, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for data, engineering and software, a role closely tied to the service\u2019s digital transformation. Portions of this interview, conducted on the sidelines of Technical Exchange Meeting 9<\/a> in Tennessee, were edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How has the U.S. Army\u2019s emerging tech and digital transformation strategy, unveiled at this year\u2019s Association of the U.S. Army conference, been received? What sort of feedback have you heard since October?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, it was received very well, because I think industry sees it as a way to kind of open up the aperture, and everybody is able to play a little bit more effectively than they could before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Jennifer Swanson (U.S. Army)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the foundation of that strategy<\/a> is standards and things that we can provide out to industry that enable their black boxes to plug in. And so it gets rid of a lot of the \u2014 ultimately all of the \u2014 vendor lock issues that we may have in parts of the architecture today. So, I think we\u2019ve gotten a lot of really positive feedback from industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We put out our unified data reference architecture, version one, as a request for information to industry at the end of October. It closed on Dec. 2. We got 31 responses, which I was really happy with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly, the data players that I\u2019ve recognized in this space for a long time were respondents, as well as a bunch of other companies. We\u2019re still assessing all of the responses, but overall it\u2019s very positive. Everybody thinks we seem to be on the right track with data mesh, and, like I said, it opens up the space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are some of the metrics you or the Army, more broadly, are using to measure success when it comes to data processing or something like a data mesh?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s so new right now that I would tell you our metrics, at this moment, are a little bit more subjective, because we haven\u2019t implemented yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, I think that the RFI responses<\/a> are a metric. Are we on the right track or not? Does industry think this makes sense? And that\u2019s really what we want from them. Does this make sense? Can you plug into this? Can you play, or did we miss? Do we have a huge gap that we need to close?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another metric that I\u2019m pretty excited about \u2014 and, again, it\u2019s not like a measurement, but it\u2019s definitely a thing \u2014 is we have been able to not just for ASA(ALT) make this a thing, but for the Army make this a thing, in a very short period of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chief data officer, Dr. David Markowitz, is completely on board with the data-mesh concept, and the Army data plan is adjusting so that we have a data mesh, and not these disparate data fabrics, which is where it started.<\/p>\n\n\n\t