A recent MITRE survey of federal Chief Data Officers (CDOs) discovered that most are facing challenges preventing them from leading their agency’s strategic objectives around data. Empowering and investing in the CDO provides the opportunity for agencies to tackle this problem.
Intelligence After Next: Federal Chief Data Office Survey Analysis—Traits of Model Programs and Common Areas of Strengths
MITRE recently conducted a survey of Chief Data Officer (CDO) organizations across the federal government to understand how they are designed and operated, with a goal to inform the evolution of individual Federal CDO organizations. In the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence Community (IC), there is a critical driver for a strong CDO: According to the March 2021 final report from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), “For the first time since World War II, America’s technological predominance—the backbone of its economic and military power—is under threat. China possesses the might, talent, and ambition to surpass the United States as the world’s leader in AI in the next decade if current trends do not change.”
In the same report, NSCAI estimates that the “armed forces’ competitive military-technical advantage could be lost” without accelerating the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI).
Because data provides the underpinnings of any AI or analytics solution, the CDO must pursue every avenue available to improve the visibility, availability, and quality of data for their organization. We discovered through our survey that most CDOs are facing challenges that prevent them from leading their agency’s strategic objectives around data. Empowering and investing in the CDO provides the opportunity for them and their agency’s data experts to collectively tackle this problem.