With active conflicts and other geopolitical hotspots emerging around the world, the Department of Navy has embraced risk and a new approach to software development and technology delivery. In a recent article on Government Technology Insider, Maximus’s Vice President of Data shared his insights on how the Pentagon is driving an updated approach to software development to stay ahead of adversaries and emergent conflicts.
Read on to learn why embracing risk might seem like an uncharacteristic stance for the armed forces, but one that makes sense to meet the needs of a new mission and protect the homeland.
The United States Armed Forces are undergoing a period of rapid change. From a name change to a mission that encompasses five domains and incorporating AI into warfighter support, the Pentagon is moving rapidly to reaffirm global leadership and dominance of the American military power. One change that’s happening behind the scenes is, however, challenging historical norms and understandings about the military’s relationship to risk. The United States Navy is rethinking risk as it applies to the development, acquisition, and delivery of software as the it aligns with these new priorities and the realities of today’s high conflict geopolitical environment.
What has driven this change in approach is not a cavalier attitude to security, but a recognition that the naval fleet must operate at the edge of connectivity as seamlessly as it does at the core. What this means is that a carrier strike group in the far reaches of the Indian Ocean must be able to send and receive data as quickly and reliably as data flows between offices at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
Lag, latency, unpredictable connectivity, or any other delay in getting data or software to and from the fleet and across network fabrics and enclaves be they ashore or afloat can, and will, compromise mission success and national security. To this end, the Department of the Navy is driving both culture and structural shifts that change the balance between acceptable risk and speed of delivery.
For Duncan McCaskill, Vice President of Data at Maximus, these changes, while unusual for a traditionally risk-averse organization like the military, are essential to future mission success. In the conversation between McCaskill and GovCIO Media and Research’s Ross Gianfortune the two dug into these changes from origin to impact. While the influence of the immediate past Secretary of the Navy renewed efforts to adopt a more entrepreneurial approach to acquisition, the changes being championed today go a lot further to address underlying obstacles to moving at the speed of mission.
“Being able to get mission data … where it needs to go at the speed of relevancy is one of the biggest challenges the department has,” shared McCaskill in the conversation. “Having an open architecture or an open design concept allows connectivity to that data.” To take advantage of that architecture, data must be cleansed and put into a common format. Then, as McCaskill noted the Marine in Texas working in an AI Accelerator can start moving quickly and delivering software faster, or Command leadership aboard the USS Gerald Ford, can apply data-driven insights for strategic advantages to in-theater operations in real time.
The conversation only gets more interesting as McCaskill and Gianfortune continue to break down the silos and use cases that will help power the Department of the Navy and move them forward to mission success. You can listen in to the full conversation by clicking on the player below.