Data Product Proposal Yields Strong Results
The Army’s unified data reference architecture (UDRA) found a new way to ensure that data is up to date within a matter of moments instead of weeks. This new development came to light during its “100-day plan,” in which UDRA officials point out certain programs that could benefit from implementing UDRA, according to Jennifer Swanson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for data, engineering and software.
UDRA partnered with the Army chief information officer, Army G-4 and U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) to conduct the demonstration.
Officials focused on specific systems related to ammunition. The software recorded how much ammunition crews possessed, and then those systems calculated if that amount of ammunition was enough to conduct the mission at hand, according to Swanson. She added that these systems are old, and the process takes a lot of manpower, which is why leaders put the data product concept in place. This proposal successfully updated the data constantly and within a short amount of time.
“People are using [Microsoft] Excel and mental mathematics and doing all kinds of things, and it takes literal days to get all of the information together,” Swanson said during her presentation at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting & Exposition held in Washington, D.C. “So, we introduced the concept of data products.”
“USARPAC was really happy with the results, ultimately, once we did the initial prep work, which took some time," Swanson said. "Now, we can basically continually update that information in seconds, not days.”