Thursday, May 9, 2024
Thursday, May 9, 2024
The Navy's Fleet Integrated Readiness and Analysis Office is working toward a "modern, unified readiness analytics dashboard" that offers service officials a go-to source for readiness analysis, reporting and decision-making that supports the Navigation Plan's 16 objectives.
The work toward such a dashboard is part of the Navy's overall focus on data-driven analytics and decision making, according to Patrick O'Connell, the service's chief digital transformation officer.
The service's Navigation Plan, released in January, outlines how the Navy will "control the seas and project power across all domains." The plan focuses on sailors, readiness, capabilities and capacity.
O'Connell, speaking at a Navy League event earlier today, highlighted a few other initiatives for the service to use data in a way that increases readiness and capabilities.
In the past year, O'Connell said the Navy developed a tool for carrier strike groups that calculates the optimized search pattern for a designated area depending on the "mix of the assets available," including piloted aircraft, ships, radars and drones. While that tool is currently a combination of automated and manual processes, the Navy is looking to make it a "live dashboard."
O'Connell is also focused on developing an automated dashboard for fleet personnel, equipment, supply, training, ordnance, network, and infrastructure, or PESTONI, to determine the readiness of a CSG for a mission.
Data is expected to become so important in the Navy's operations that it's "not so much if but more of a when" that "software folks" and "data scientists" will exist in the service "as a profession," he said.
O'Connell said education-oriented tools, like a "digital academy," could provide Navy leadership with a common understanding and language in this domain.
"Culture is one of the most important but hardest elements of a digital transformation," he said.
Rear Adm. Paul Spedero, Jr., the director of fleet readiness and analysis, also spoke at the Navy League event and emphasized the significance of a data-accepting culture.
"Transformation within an organization, particularly one that is steeped in heritage like the United States Navy . . . there's a lot of folks that are fairly comfortable with the problems in place and their approach to the business side of the Navy, and knocking down those barriers -- it can be pretty challenging," Spedero said.