DON IT West provides the opportunity for attendees to hear directly from Navy leadership, allowing them to obtain the necessary information to identify innovative IT solutions for current and future IT challenges.
The panel, moderated by Tom Sasala, DON chief data officer, included Rear Adm. Doug Small, NAVWAR commander; John Pope, NAVWAR executive director; Ruth Youngs Lew, PEO Digital and Enterprise Services; Les Hubbard, PEO Manpower, Logistics and Business Solutions (MLB); and Rear Adm. Kurt Rothenhaus, PEO Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I).
Small kicked off the panel talking about how we are in a strategic competition with near-peer adversaries, and emphasized the importance of data as a resource and how available data must be leveraged to fight and win against these competitors.
“One of the greatest advantages we have as a nation is our entrepreneurial spirit, and the people in this country who have invented the things we are here to talk about today,” said Small. “I am talking about the innovations that allow us to leverage data for decision advantage. The better we are at tapping into that brain trust, at speed and scale, the better we will be able to fight and win against our competitors.”
Pope echoed Small focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit of the NAVWAR workforce. Through resources like data science courses offered to all NAVWAR employees, he highlighted how important it is for employees to be educated about data and how it contributes to fleet readiness.
“One of the things we’ve done to open up the entrepreneurial spirit of our workforce is having steppingstone classes about data science and management so our employees can develop the dialogue and skills to manage data themselves,” said Pope. “We absolutely partner with industry, academia and other warfare centers, but we also want our own workforce to tackle problems using tools they’ve learned from these data science courses.”
Youngs Lew also spoke about a recent effort focused on data transport and data protection, specifically modernizing the Navy and Marine infrastructure to allow for the secure movement of data. As part of these efforts, they are rolling out Flank Speed, a cloud Microsoft 365 enterprise that includes Outlook, Teams and OneDrive to support a more productive workforce and increased connectivity.
As the leader of PEO MLB, Hubbard talked about the decision to organize MLB into three pillars, with an emphasis on data transformation services. Because MLB manages, acquires and delivers IT capabilities across nine of the 12 DoD information domains within the Navy, a key goal is to enable the actionable use of all that data and make sure the people who need to use that information can access and utilize it efficiently.
“We organized MLB with the data transportation services pillar in the middle because most of the Navy’s data moves through PEO MLB systems,” Hubbard said. “Enabling the use of that data, ensuring it is available and consumable, is front and center as one of our key strategic goals.”
In addition to providing warfighting critical data, Rothenhaus emphasized the importance of providing our Sailors with agile software systems so they can fight and win against any potential adversaries. Everything they do as part of PEO C4I should be in a digital, seamless flow to get capability out to the warfighter.
“It is imperative that we provide our Sailors with the tools to be self-sufficient, that they’re equipped with the training and support where and when required,” said Rothenhaus, “including in a contested fight on a really bad networking day, so that they are able to operate no matter the circumstances.”
Small wrapped up the event with a focus on data in relation to Project Overmatch, a high priority initiative aimed at connecting platforms, weapons, and sensors together in a robust Naval Operational Architecture that integrates with Joint All-Domain Command and Control for enhanced Distributed Maritime Operations. Critical to Project Overmatch is the development of networks, infrastructure, data architecture, tools and analytics that support the operational and developmental environment that will enable sustained maritime dominance for years to come.
About NAVWAR:
NAVWAR identifies, develops, delivers and sustains information warfighting capabilities and services that enable naval, joint, coalition and other national missions operating in warfighting domains from seabed to space and through cyberspace. NAVWAR consists of more than 11,000 civilian, active duty and reserve professionals located around the world.