The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is preparing to reveal a revamped data strategy – set to cover fiscal years (FY) 2025 through 2027 – in the coming months, the agency’s chief data officer said on Tuesday.
During day one of AFCEA International’s TechNet Cyber conference in Baltimore, DISA Chief Data Officer Caroline Kuharske told reporters that DISA’s strategy update will be a continuation of the existing iteration.
“With the previous one, we really wanted to get our hands or get our head around what data do we even have, what pockets do we have, what silos do we have?” Kuharske said. “Now that we know what we have, we have the data catalog. Now we’re going to start doing more integration of data governance and policies in the backend of systems.”
DISA’s Data Strategy Implementation Plan for FY 2022-2024, unveiled in August 2022, sought to unravel the combat support agency’s current state of data architecture and rebuild it into a cohesive system that enables transparency and data sharing, and encourages data collaboration.
According to Kuharske, DISA is now wrapping up the last mile of its FY 2022-2024 plan to continue to “put things into play to break down those silos into an integrated data architecture.”
The upcoming strategy, which is still under development, will ensure that whenever a “program application comes through different governance boards within the agency that they that they are applying the data governance and policies” put out by DISA’s CDO office.
“[We’re] going from just trying to figure out what the lay of the land is to operationalizing it through the different technologies that we can use,” Kuharske said.
Notably, the new data strategy will also include initiatives to integrate efforts and capabilities of the agency’s emerging tech directorate with those led by Kuharske’s team. Some examples include automation of data normalization, automation for application programming interface security and registration, and leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) for data reporting.
“[We’re] partnering with [them] to put some AI strategy in there and make sure that what our focus is when it comes to the data and what they’re focusing on with emerging technologies mesh together,” Kuharske said.
Additionally, the new strategy will feature guidelines and standards related to the integration of data, analytics, and AI into all aspects of defense operations – in direct coordination with the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s (CDAO) (CDAO) 2023 Data, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Adoption Strategy.
Lt. Gen Robert Skinner, DISA’s director and commander of the Joint Force Headquarters- Department of Defense Information Network (JFHQ-DoDIN), told reporters during a separate session today that much like in the previous data plan, DISA will once again collaborate and gather insight from the DoD CDAO in developing its data strategy.
DISA is also partnering with U.S. Cyber Command and JFHQ-DoDIN to garner insight on how to deliver critical and actionable data to the warfighter.
“It’s really about identifying the pertinent data and then making sure that we are able to retain and look back on it to have analytics superiority,” Skinner said.
