THE ARMY’S VANTAGE POINT
working to give them more hours in the day to focus on readiness and training, and making sure their units are ready.”
OUT FOR A TEST DRIVE “Our fielding process has not been the standard fielding process,” Coleman said. “A lot of people are used to those static fielding plans, but this has not been that process.” It was a story of being in the room with the right people at the right time. “We did a Vantage demo to a group of incoming corps and division command- ers,” she recalled, “and Lt. Gen. [Michael “Erik”] Kurilla [commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps] happened to be one of those people. He and Maj. Gen. [James J.] Mingus [commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division] offered up the 82nd 18th Airborne Corps to be our pilot.”
Beginning in September 2019, the Army Vantage team sent trainers and developers to spend three days each week embed- ded with the 82nd Airborne Division. Tey worked to understand the organi- zation’s processes, ensure that the data was correct, and work hand in hand with Soldiers to make sure the platform was not only usable but actually helpful. “Army Vantage is a game changer at the company, troop and battery level,” Mingus said. “Te system is proactive vice reactive, with thousands of disparate data sources now at our tactical level and senior leader fingertips.” In an information paper dated Feb. 25, 2020, the 82nd noted its belief that Vantage “is both valuable and mature enough for Armywide deployment.” Te report acknowledges that the platform’s usefulness relies entirely on the accuracy of the data in the underlying authoritative sources. Despite that limitation, however, “it is constantly improving in real time and has unlimited application potential across the force once it is fully functional.”
CONCLUSION In the early days of what was then the Army Leader Dashboard, the PEO EIS team saw the potential for this solution to change the way the Army does business. “Tat still is our vision,” Coleman said.
Army Vantage is an enterprise data analytics platform that connects to and draws data from new and legacy systems in any form, at any scale.
“We’ve been working on some small-scale data-sharing with other systems and data source owners, while also trying not to bite off more than we can chew. But it is our vision that this becomes a common data platform for the Army, and that we are able to pull in all this data, piece it together, and then to provide it to other folks who might need it [for example, an Army enter- prise resource planning system], without having to spend the time and money of creating those system interfaces.”
Markowitz also has his eyes on the future of Army Vantage. “I think it will fill two critical roles,” he said. “First, I think it is a tool that has lowered the barrier for data analysts and the data community within the Army. We see them gel around [this platform] and then build their skill sets to be better data analysts and understand the Army’s data, and to help the Army with its own decisions and its own data
management. Second, it’s the tool itself and the type of visualization it’s host- ing, the mechanics of it. I think those are the two kind of longer-term benefits we’re going to continue to see from the program.”
According to Mingus, it will also create new efficiencies for Army, allowing users to make decisions with the most up-to- date information. “Army Vantage is the way ahead for the Army,” he said. “Te system represents a significant step forward in the Army’s efforts to modernize the way we use ‘big data’ across multiple systems. Mission command requires shared under- standing at all levels.”
Whatever the future holds for Army Vantage, one thing is clear: It has been an unconventional effort in nearly every sense of the word. While most acquisition programs follow an established road map to success, the Strategic Initiatives Group and PEO EIS have often had to blaze their own trail to make this vision a real- ity. With strong support from the Army’s senior leaders and their industry partners, Army Vantage is creating a 360-degree view of the Army’s data landscape.
ELLEN SUMMEY provides contract support to
the U.S. Army Acquisition
Support Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for SAIC. She holds an M.A. in human relations from the University of Oklahoma and a B.A. in mass communication from Louisiana State University. She has more than a decade of communication experience in both the government and commercial sectors. She won an ALTie award for her article “Army Leader Dashboard: Creating Insight-Driven Decisions” in the Summer 2019 issue before becoming an editor at Army AL&T.
18
Army AL&T Magazine
Summer 2020
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