Lindsey Saul, chief data and analytics officer at the Defense Logistics Agency, said DLA is working to build up an enterprise data management division to raise the agency’s data maturity level from two to three, Federal News Network reported Monday.
“In today’s day and age, where data is is deemed a weapon — or they even say data analytics platform is almost like a weapon system of the future for the Department of Defense — we really need to be prepared and equipped to have access to our data very quickly, be able to understand our data, and not do what we’ve done in the past, which is really rely on a single person who has all of the knowledge,” Saul said during a webinar Thursday.
“And instead, we need to make sure that it’s well documented, we have the right data dictionaries in place, the correct metadata and metadata management tools to link the lineage of the data to the present day,” she added.
Saul discussed how data management and access enabled DLA to speed up the development of applications in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine crisis.
She also cited DLA’s work on the Information Visualization Evaluation program using the Department of Defense’s Advana analytics tool and how the initiative provides the agency with insights over the logistics of fuels, operational rations and other items.