Combined Joint All-Domain C2 Calls for Services to Develop Data Standards, Overcome Cultural Barriers

Several experts said advancing the U.S. Air Force’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept will not only require services to employ artificial intelligence, machine learning and other emerging technologies to connect sensors and warfighters but also develop data standards, C4ISRNET reported Monday. 

“If you don’t have data standards, then, you know, what’s the accuracy and trustworthiness of the data? The defense data decision can be life or death decisions. And in those situations, the data needs to be trusted,” said Kate Mercer, a vice president for Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense business. 

Danelle Barrett, a retired Navy rear admiral and the service’s former deputy chief information officer, said standardizing data would require services to address cultural barriers. 

“But that also requires that the services agree to formats that they can live with. And you know, that’s always the kind of hard part because these problems are not technical … the hardest pieces are institutional and cultural,” Barrett said. 

Other industry experts cited the need for leaders to prioritize data standardization in support of CJADC2. 

“Leaders need to be open and transparent in their conversations,” said Juliana Vida, chief technical adviser of the public sector at Splunk and former deputy CIO at the Navy. “Decision-makers and leaders need to just jump in and accept and trust the processes that already exist so they can move forward and actually use the technology that is available.” 

Brett Loubert, a principal at Deloitte’s defense business, said the development of data standards and open-data architectures could help services discover new capabilities. 

“You’re actually now sort of inviting them into this collaborative discussion and collaborative development of standards. And you might come up with scenarios, effects and ways of doing analysis that you haven’t thought of before,” Loubert told the publication.