DOD to Modernize Intelligence Information and facts Apparatus With ‘Back to Basics’ Strategy > U.S. Division of Defense > Protection Section Information
The Defense Department’s facts technology ability delivers intelligence details to leaders and warfighters to give them a conclusion-making gain.
The legacy systems that deliver that capacity, on the other hand, need to be modernized to be certain the United States would not slide behind its opponents, said the deputy main data officer for particular entry method information and facts technological innovation.
“Our nation proceeds to experience a sophisticated, evolving and numerous established of threats,” Cynthia J. Mendoza explained yesterday at a discussion board sponsored by GovExec. “To counter these threats and keep on being in advance of our adversaries, it is really extremely critical that we have timely, insightful and precise info and info.”
U.S. adversaries, Mendoza reported, are advancing in locations these kinds of as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, equipment discovering and offer chain possibility administration. The U.S. will have to do the exact same.
“To confront these technological know-how troubles, we will have to be united throughout the DOD in how we are scaling and operationalizing the IT infrastructure and securing it to offer for the very best sophisticated technologies,” she stated. “As we look forward, our problem will be to scale and operationalize IT-enabling capabilities by leveraging important advanced technologies, this sort of as synthetic intelligence and machine learning, 5G wireless know-how and quantum computing.”
Mendoza said she’s guided by three principles she thinks will help her shift the department forward, but which are not at all new.
Those people primary tenants include constructing dependable partnerships, understanding mission success and results, and leveraging finest practices and lessons realized.
“I contact these ‘getting again to essentials,'” she mentioned.
Stakeholders in the IT modernization method will not just contain the office, the intelligence local community, global companions, the non-public sector, academia and Congress, Mendoza said.
“I actually believe folks are the ‘secret sauce,'” Mendoza said. “They will make the functionality genuine. It all starts with constructing and developing a stakeholder engagement approach that is inclusive of all important company stakeholders and centered on a certain ability hole.”
She explained trusted partnerships with stakeholders empower DOD to rally all over a frequent objective with accountability to supply capabilities with an enduring commitment for achievement.
Mendoza also reported the section requirements to be apparent on what it wants to do — it will have to have an understanding of mission benefits and outcomes.
“What problem are we hoping to resolve?” she asked. “We have to have to be crystal clear on the outcome and the outcome we are all functioning to achieve. We will need to make sure that we validate this with our stakeholder neighborhood and that they comprehend the supposed outcome.”
Leveraging most effective techniques and lessons realized is also essential to prevent “reinventing the wheel” when addressing DOD’s mission plans and targets, she explained.
“We leverage classes figured out from our colleagues who are executing very similar points,” she stated. “Finest procedures and very best remedies go hand-in-hand, and so do ideal techniques: reference architecture frameworks, support-centric and system centered environments, frequent operating ideas, speaking and working from the identical ontology. These are fundamentals, best methods that remove our need to have to reinvent the wheel.”