Tech

Navy updating information superiority vision with a focus on data

Department of the Navy CIO Jane Rathbun will be working to update the 2020 information superiority vision in the next six months.

By Mark Pomerleau

January 25, 2024

Cryptologic Technician (Technical) 2nd Class David J. Aguilera monitors the electromagnetic spectrum of air and surface contacts in the combat information center aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage (DDG 61), Feb. 16, 2014. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jared King/Released

After two months in the job, the Department of Navy’s CIO is looking at updating the sea services’ information superiority vision with a focus on data.

Published in 2020, the document had three key focus areas: modernize, innovate and defend. Now, Jane Rathbun wants to move to a more data-centric approach.

“We are going to evolve to 2.0 in our information superiority vision [which] is going to go from modernize, innovate and defend — all very important things, we’re not going to stop doing any of those things — to optimize, secure and decide,” she said at the Google Defense Forum Thursday. “How do we make data a central focus of our efforts to make sure that it’s available, transparent, trustworthy, consumable and decision worthy? You’re going to see over the next six months our evolution of that concept.”

The Department of Defense writ large has begun to shift to more of a data-centric approach vice a network-centric approach that envisioned a castle-and-mote mentality to network access. A data-centric model is about ensuring the right information can be accessed by the right person anywhere, with the proper security controls in place.

As the DOD is moving toward the notion of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJAD2) — which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace from all the services and key foreign partners could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders for better decision-making — placing a premium on data will be of the utmost importance.

“I think emphasizing and focusing on how do we get the data there” is key, Rathbun told DefenseScoop following her remarks. “How do we architect an ecosystem that allows us to move data, allows us to see the data, allows us to tag the data, allows us to consume the data, allows us to do deep analytics on the data? That kind of needs to be the driving force of how we get to a platform as a strategic asset with data [as] the center.”

The Marine Corps, which falls under the Department of the Navy, is also beginning to shift to a more data-centric model that focuses on getting the right information to decision makers at all echelons and levels on the battlefield.