DATA IS ALWAYS DECISIVE
All of defense acquisition is characterized by the constant gathering of data. Every bit of a program must be documented, from need statement to requirements to every step of development. Every program has reams of data. Yet it has never been collected and managed at the enterprise level in any automated or systemic way.
Te Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Tech- nology (OASA(ALT)), for example, has always required programs to provide data for milestone decisions and in response to requests for information made by leaders and decision-makers. Te milestone deci- sion authority will require updated cost estimates, test data and a detailed schedule before approving a program’s advance to the next phase of its acquisition life cycle.
Such data is collected, analyzed and provided in an easy-to-understand manner for the milestone decision authority and other stakeholders so they can confidently assess that the program should continue development and fielding. However, the acquisition community has lacked common tools across the enterprise that can store and provide the data for the dashboard to ingest before or after these milestone events. Tis is a problem for acquisition leaders and resource manag- ers who need programmatic data at all points of a program’s life cycle. Tis clear gap is both a challenge and an opportunity for the acquisition community to finally develop the tools that will fill the data gap and allow current and future leaders to make better decisions.
The development of an automated system will allow for users at all levels to begin leveraging data throughout the acquisition enterprise to
conduct their jobs more effectively.
10 Army AL&T Magazine Summer 2019
BUILDING THE ACQUISITION DATA DOMAIN Dr. Bruce D. Jette, the Army acquisition executive, has developed the framework for the Army’s acquisition data domain, which will be how the Army identi- fies, collects, manages and analyzes data throughout all Army programs’ life cycles—what it will look like and how it will function. (See Figure 1, Page 12.) Te acquisition data domain will collect and link data from a program’s incep- tion as an idea through its development, production, fielding, sustainment and demilitarization. Te larger domain will then interlink these subdomains so that leaders can understand the impacts of accelerating or divesting capabilities that are being developed.
Without such data, the acquisition
community will not begin to leverage advanced analytical tools, such as artificial intelligence or machine learning. To do so, it needs access to the structured data that makes up programs. Building the acqui- sition data domain will require significant shifts in the business processes and tools
that are used for all aspects of program management.
PROGRAM TOOLS Last August, the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Plans, Programs and Resources began a pilot program to build the business manage- ment portion of the acquisition data domain. It is currently piloting the Air Force-developed system known as Proj- ect Management Resource Tools (PMRT). Te PMRT system has been in use for more than 20 years, and comprises multi- ple modules for managing and visualizing programmatic and financial data.
Te benefits of using a tool that another service has developed are the “speed to market” and design maturity. PMRT is already approved to operate on the Army network and is vertically aligned with Office of the Secretary of Defense report- ing requirements.
Many of the program offices are currently using Microsoft Excel to manage billion- dollar programs. PMRT will replace these inaccessible spreadsheets and auto- mate the way program offices manage their finances. However, some program offices and program executive offices (PEOs) have tools for managing their financial data. ASA(ALT) will work with these program offices to incorporate data into PMRT when possible. Moving from no tools—or several sets of tools—to a single tool used Armywide will mark a major cultural shift.
DATA CULTURAL SHIFT SPANS ALL LEVELS Te data transformation within the acqui- sition community will succeed only if the community, at all levels, actively takes part in the cultural shift. It will require users in the program offices to change tools and business processes while leaders
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