Nearly a year after the Pentagon released its AI adoption strategy, the agency’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) is making progress in aligning strategic goals with empowering staff to leverage leveraged data analysis and AI.
The Department of Defense (DoD) revealed THE Data, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Adoption Strategy for 2023on November 2, 2023, which aimed to create a “foundation within DoD for the accelerated adoption and use of data, analytics, and AI across the department while promoting speed, delivery, learning and responsible development”.
“We are building a digital workforce that knows how and when to use data analytics and AI in their daily activities and for warfighter functions,” said Christopher Skaluba, DoD CDAO executive director, during an FNN webinar in September. 26.
Skaluba noted that CDAO is actively working on several initiatives to drive the three priorities of the AI adoption strategy – enable, accelerate and scale – and equip DoD personnel to effectively use AI. data analysis and AI in its daily operations.
One of the key initiatives he highlighted is the development of a standardized framework designed to identify current and future staff with critical data analytics and AI skills and align them with training opportunities appropriate to their specific roles and mission requirements.
“We have a digital learning framework that enables staff to gain knowledge of data analytics and AI at fundamental, intermediate and advanced levels for their specific roles within the department,” said Skaluba. “We (also) conduct extensive outreach in local communities through academic and industry partnerships, expanding student exposure to DoD career pathways in data analytics and AI from middle school through high school all the way to university.”
However, Skaluba emphasized that while the focus is on empowering staff to take advantage of data analytics and AI, it is equally important to foster a culture of learning and experimentation throughout the department. He stressed that this responsibility lies with the entire department and not just the CDAO.
“We want staff to experience use cases responsibly, and we want leaders who are ready to change the way they think about their organization’s data, how it is structured, and how they share it. An important part of this is simply changing the culture. And that’s not something CDAO can do. We can only lay the foundation for this for the rest of the department to follow and get people to change the culture,” Skaluba said.
