Navy unveils new data analytics strategy

The Navy has unveiled a new data analytics strategy document designed to accelerate IT modernization, consolidation of information, innovation and efforts to keep pace with commercial technological progress.
The new “Navy Strategy for Data and Analytics Optimization” calls for rapid transformation of training, concepts and policies designed to make data analytics faster and more efficient.
Recognizing that the pace of technological change is often faster within industry and commercial enterprises, the strategy is woven around the premise that new solutions, software updates or improvements in operating systems and data analysis often emerge quickly.
With this in mind, the strategy also heavily emphasizes a growing need to look for open source solutions  for expediting IT acquisition.
When embracing commercial innovation might not make sense for a government developmental IT effort, the strategy calls for increased collaboration with academia and industry.  
“It is paramount that we become able to adapt faster to data-driven innovations, create new innovations and deploy those innovations,” the strategy states.
The text of the strategy articulates a few goals, such as an ability to “predict and inventory the right data analytics to meet the demands of DON (Department of the Navy) data consumers and decision makers – and -- deploy and operate innovative solutions with minimal time to market.”
As a way to accelerate the key aims of the new strategic effort, the Navy’s Acting Chief Information Officer is establishing a new Data and Analytics Consortium to define emerging policies, share lessons learned and help establish best practices.
In a recent memo, Acting Navy CIO Kelly Fletcher said “the DAC will respond to data and decision demands, share best practices, and collaborate on related research.”
The DAC is also designed to promote the governance, standards, training, and policies necessary to achieve data and analytics optimization, according to Fletcher’s memo.
The new strategy also specifies close coordination with DOD’s evolving Joint Information Environment (JIE) – an ongoing effort to engender greater interservice data synthesis, integration, collaboration, interoperability and security.
“All data collected within the DOD will be visible, accessible, understandable, trusted and interoperable for authorized users,” the strategy explains.
The new analytics strategy is closely aligned with a current effort to accelerate industry collaboration to advance the Navy’s Next Generation Enterprise Network – Recompete (GEN-R) data consolidation and integration efforts, according to Navy Capt. Don Harder, deputy program executive officer for the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems.
“There is a synchronization that happens to occur. Our desire to move to the cloud includes the big data analytics component. The number of applications and users associated with where we would like to go with Navy integration is bigger than what is in NMCI today,” Harder said.