Data “Strategy” in a Military Enterprise

What are the ingredients of a Military Data Strategy? Is there a Data Strategy? How does the approach to the digital economy reflect in military data strategy? 

In its current strategic plans, the military aspires to be a data-driven organisation, data-centric, data-dominant over potential adversaries, or data-use as a force multiplier. Those words echo current trends, but how are they defined in the roads the military must journey to gain more value from its data?

This article creates a definition for data “strategy” for military affairs and studies five data strategies from Europe and the US to see how their approaches differ from data maturity, enterprise architecture, strategic approach, and contextual viewpoints.

Figure 1: Essential components in the military strategic approach to data

1. So-called ¨Data Strategies¨ with the Military

In the military, strategy is perceived as a theory of victory. It explains how to use force to achieve political objectives in war.  A typical military strategy comprises Ends, Ways and Means following the Lykke model, defining “Strategy equals Ends (objectives toward which one strives) plus Ways (courses of action) plus Means (instruments by which some end can be achieved).“  

Data is recognised within an Enterprise Architecture as one domain or approach separate from or within the information domain. The TOGAF data domain resides between business and applications. Moreover, data architecture aims to translate business needs into data and system requirements and manage data and its flow through the enterprise.  Digitisation has increased data value, and digital transformations, if successful, have gained strategic advantages in business performance.  With digitalisation, military affairs value data, especially in multi-sensor surveillance, intelligence analysis, predictive maintenance, resource optimisation, force generation, and decision-making. The amount of collected data, big data, has been perceived as a game-changer or force multiplier.  

Combining data and strategy to create a data strategy provides a focused view of military affairs' achieving strategic Ends using data as a Means or data-related tools as Ways to enable or multiply capabilities. Hence, data strategy is more of an implementation plan to achieve goals in the Defence Strategy. While the global digital economy recognises three different approaches:  Market-driven (US), rights-driven (EU), and state-driven (CHI). Because of access issues, sampling for data strategies is done only from the US, Australia, and Europe. 

Therefore, the data strategic principles in military affairs are defined as:

• Recognised threat and technology development environment that may provide the adversary an advantage or an emerging vulnerability in their data structure.
• Ends defined in military affairs (processes, business) terms
• Data-related Ways: Analytics, data science, data fusion
• Data as Means: Big data, metadata models, semantic models, integration and sharing
• Military threat environment requires more efficient data-related confidentiality(C), integrity(I) and availability(A) methods to ensure the enabling or multiplying outcomes
• Since data is a component in a military socio-technical system, the transfer of culture is usually the most challenging hurdle to overcome on the transformation roadmap
• Multi-sourcing dimension to ensure that military affairs are integrated with society, the defence industry, and other governmental agencies and coalition partners.
• Compliance with the digital economy principles that the surrounding society has adopted: market-driven or rights-driven.
• Finally, data lives in a technical environment, platforms and networks. Do they enable the new valuation of data?

 

2. How do current data strategies reflect the principles?

Next, the paper uses the strategic data principles to compare contemporary military approaches to gain more value from data within their enterprise and as part of a wider data environment.

Table 1: Comparing a variety of defence data strategies against the principles of military data strategy

Data strategic principles	US DoD[1] 2020	UK MoD[2] 2021	SWEDEF[3] 2021	BUNDESWEHR[4][5] 2021	FINDEF[6] 2021
Recognised threat environment and confrontation	DoD has lacked the enterprise data management to ensure that trusted, critical data is widely available to or accessible by mission commanders, warfighters, decision-makers, and mission partners in a real-time, useable, secure, and linked manner.	With increasing data, it is harder to isolate insights from information	NTR	Recognises the cyber and information space	Disinformation and other data threats, emerging technology
Ends defined in military affairs	Warfighters at all echelons require tested, secure, seamless access to data across networks, supporting infrastructure, and weapon systems out to the tactical edge.	Data is an enduring strategic asset that, when effectively exploited, drives battlespace advantages and business efficiency. Integrated Operating Concept.	Interoperable processes. More effective, simple, safer, and asymmetric capabilities.	Harmonisation and automation of military processes, resilience of defence, value for money	Information dominance, user-driven
Data-related Ways	Data is Visible, Accessible, Understandable, Linked, Trustworthy, Interoperable, Secure.	Exercise sovereignty, standardise data, exploit data, secure data, curate data, endure data	Data asset management, data exchange with other agencies, data modelling, Chief Data Officer and Data Protection Officer, Data science	Data clusters, short innovation cycles, mobile access, and user experience-driven	Improve data accessibility, findability, usability, and establish a new information culture. Knowledge management
Data as Means	Architecture, Standards, Governance, Talent & Culture	Central data leadership, People skill and culture, Governance & controls, data foundations, exploitation	Information architecture, data annotation, master data management, open data, data clustering, Common Information Model, Information Supply Chain, Antifragile data architecture	Establish the inspector for the data and information space	Manage strategic assets, data fusion, and enrichment
Cultural challenges	Service Members, Civilians, and Contractors at every echelon make data-informed decisions and create evidence-based policies.	NTR	Information as a strategic resource, from application-focused to data-driven, the need for more data, Access to high-quality data, and Data trust.	Innovation-driven approach	Sharing culture, right to use data, and data consumership.
CIA methods	Consumers know that data is protected from unauthorized use and manipulation.	Secure by design	Data quality	Improve cyber defence capabilities.	Identifying critical information, risk management, and ensuring availability
Multi-sourcing	Achieve semantic as well as syntactic interoperability	Defence data ecosystem	National data sources, International open sources.	Transorganisational clusters	Global data environment, data exchange management
Compliance with the digital economy	Data management and compliance with policies are a top priority	Data complies with legal, regulatory and ethical obligations.	SWE, NATO and EU compliance	NTR	Open government
Enabling Technology	Sensors and platforms across all domains must be designed, procured, and exercised with open data standards as a key requirement.	NTR	A cohesive command chain with secure, robust, accessible, and user-friendly IT systems.	Consolidation and integration of data platforms	NTR

In summary, the data strategies in a variety of Defence Forces:

• Do not necessarily approach data from the threat environment or confrontation (2/5), but from the increasing amount of data and fewer abilities for sense-making (2/5).
• Aim to achieve the ends defined in military affairs (5/5), at least at the principal level.
• Data-related Ways are defined per the existing data management boundaries and maturity. Some emphasise ways to access data and process efficiency (3/5). Others see data as an accelerator for capability development (2/5).
• Some see data-related Means from the management approach (3/5) and others from the value creation viewpoint (2/5).
• Cultural challenges are approached from the consumer viewpoint (3/5). Moreover, innovation for novel data applications is seen as a cultural accelerator in one strategy.
• All strategies have a view to data Confidentiality, Integrity or Availability
• All strategies identify data as a Multi-sourced asset.
• All strategies recognise that with a global approach to data assets, compliance with the digital economy is a relevant issue.
• All strategies identify the Enabling and emerging Technologies but do not necessarily refer to them in the data strategy paper.

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[1] US DoD Office of Prepublication (2020): Executive Summary: DoD Data Strategy

Unleashing Data to Advance the National Defense Strategy

[2] UK MoD (2021): Data strategy for defence

[3] FOI-R--5112--SE (2021): Förstudie om informationshantering i Försvarsmakten – med

fokus på information som strategisk resurs

[4] WD 2 - 3000 - 063/21 (22. September 2021)

[5] Strategische Leitlinie Digitalisierung

[6] https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/163329/PLM_2021_3.pdf?sequence=1