CREATING INSIGHT-DRIVEN DECISIONS


Tat was the question put to the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Informa- tion Systems (PEO EIS) by Gen. Mark A. Milley, Army chief of staff. Milley wanted a way to access and visualize those troves of Army data, to inform decision-making at the executive level. Te challenge, then, was to identify the sources of relevant data, connect to them and provide the sort of display Milley was seeking. After research- ing commercially available solutions and related systems used by other services, Milley and PEO EIS set out to obtain a secure, web-based application that could be accessed from any approved device. (See Figure 1, Page 19.)


TACKLING THE COMPLEXITY This ambitious project, called Army Leader Dashboard, quickly morphed into more than just a simple display for Army data. As PEO EIS assembled a team and coordinated vendors and contracts, Milley provided feedback to shape early proto- type development. Trough this process, he and other senior leaders began to understand two important things: First, the data problem is even more complex than they initially assumed. Second, the dashboard tool could provide a tremen- dous amount of insight if applied more broadly across Army domains.


ONE OF MANY DATA SOURCES


Pvt. Sherry Chapman, a logistician with Theater Movement Control- In-Transit Visibility, 21st Theater Sustainment Command (TSC), enters equipment information into the Single Mobility System on the Portable Deployment Kit tablet. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Adrian Patoka, 21st TSC)


“It was born as a readiness platform,” said Col. Kyle Jette (no relation to Dr. Bruce Jette), an Army G-8 (Programs) data analyst and the dashboard’s data expert.


“It had a smaller scope than it does now but, as Gen. Milley saw the prototypes,


he was so impressed by the power and the potential, and he wanted all Army data brought in.”


The Army Leader Dashboard was designed to address data problems within the Army’s business systems and enterprise mission areas—logistics, human resources, finance, and so on—but similar issues plague the weapons and intelligence systems as well.


16 Army AL&T Magazine Summer 2019


With that directive, the team had a steep hill to climb. Early efforts identified more than 700 unique sources of data, all of which might potentially need to be linked to the dashboard. Tose data sources run the gamut from training databases to equipment inventories, personnel records and maintenance reports.


“Tere is a data capture team that inter- acts with the data sources, and they work to identify applicable data,” said Rajat Senjalia, technical director for the Strategic Initiatives Group at PEO EIS, which leads the dashboard project. “Tey utilize different technologies to bring that data in, whether that data is structured,


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