To achieve the vision outlined by Department of Defense (DoD) vision outlined in its 2023 Data, Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence Adoption Strategy, defense agencies must first modernize their data management approach to support the responsible use of AI. Data plays an important role in laying the foundation for AI adoption. When defense agencies have secure and fast access to data, it can enable them to modernize applications and systems at the speed of need.
Craig Martell, Chief Digital and AI Officer at the DoD, spoke to the need for continuous modernization to support the DoD’s mission. “Technologies evolve,” he said. “Things are going to change next week, next year, next decade. And what wins today might not win tomorrow.”
“Rather than identify a handful of AI-enabled warfighting capabilities that will beat our adversaries, our strategy outlines the approach to strengthening the organizational environment within which our people can continuously deploy data analytics and AI capabilities for enduring decision advantage,” Martell continued.
To support AI-enabled warfighting capabilities, defense agencies need to modernize their data management systems in alignment with the VAULTIS framework.
What is the VAULTIS Framework?
While the DoD originally outlined the VAULTIS framework in 2020 Data Strategy, it expanded upon this framework in its 2023 Strategy. The VAULTIS framework is a tool for organizing and monitoring data management plans. This framework is built on seven attributes to ensure that data is Visible, Accessible, Understandable, Linked, Trustworthy, Interoperable, and Secure.
In theory, this framework helps to lay the foundation for the DoD to optimize data quality and organization to empower the use of AI-enabled systems. However, implementing this framework to achieve the DoD’s vision for leveraging data and AI-enabled systems requires defense agencies to modernize how they store and manage data.
Modernizing Data Management to Support the VAULTIS Framework
The DoD amasses 22 terabytes of data a day – but turning that data into actionable intelligence has proven to be challenging. A whitepaper published by Denodo identified that one of the key problems is that “in a multi-domain, multi-branch military environment, data is scattered across countless systems and stored in varying formats.” Decentralization and storage in different formats make it difficult for the DoD to leverage data strategically, respond to changes, and put it to work quickly in support of the warfighter.
In an interview with Government Technology Insider, Kevin Bohan, an expert in data management from Denodo, explained how modernizing the DoD’s data environment is critical to making data a strategic resource. “The data landscape is constantly changing,” Bohan said. “By using a data virtualization platform, agencies will have a single dashboard view of their data across heterogenous data siloes, without having to move it or build a repository. Defense leaders can use this platform to enable real-time data-driven decision making and responsible AI systems to modernize at the speed of the battle.”
With data virtualization, defense agencies can improve data management capabilities to meet the seven attributes of the VAULTIS framework and lay the foundation for responsible use of AI-enabled systems.
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