Adopt a Data-Centric Mindset for Operational Planning

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is investing in advanced technologies to gain and maintain a competitive advantage over the nation’s adversaries. From automated sensor-shooter networks, AI, next-generation vehicles, helicopters, and weapons to software factories and innovation centers, the undertaking grows daily to meet the demands of advanced technological warfare. Yet success depends as much on making all the data work together as it does on putting all the elements in place.

DOD’s military advantage depends on being able to rapidly understand situations and to develop and execute courses of action faster than the adversary. In my previous role at the Joint Special Operations Command, I saw firsthand that essential to meeting this challenge is the ability to collect, harness, and use data across advanced platforms and systems. To do this, defense leaders must do two things:

• Embrace a data-first mindset. This requires an organizational culture in which its members identify the data required for decisions and actions at the beginning of a process. Having this level of understanding enables stakeholders to organize and integrate new data sets as required for decision advantage. Individuals and organizations that embrace a data-first mindset understand the importance of data and establish systems, processes, and governance to make data visible, accessible, understandable, linked, trustworthy, interoperable, and secure.
• Operationalize the data-first mindset. Simply establishing systems and processes to capture and use data will provide only marginal improvement to a team’s work. Organizations must reimagine their existing processes and incorporate data, analytics, and AI tools to realize the outsized impacts of a modern workforce.   

A natural place for an organization to start exercising this concept is operational planning. Each individual service and the joint force have similar planning frameworks to facilitate the interaction between commanders, staff, and subordinate headquarters throughout the planning process. The military’s planning processes are well understood, driven by data, used frequently, and employed to solve a wide range of problems. Operational headquarters that adopt data-first planning will drive requirements for more data-centric tools, processes, integrations, and visualizations to dynamically capture critical information both up and down the chain of command. 

In a data-first organization, planners at all levels look to automate the collection and processing of data to inform the planning process. They add steps to their service’s planning framework to identify data needs to generate understanding and accelerate decision making for their commander. Similar to intelligence collection efforts to refine a course of action, planners develop a data collection plan and assign responsibility to the staff or subordinate headquarters to develop the data elements required and their frequency to continue planning as well as drive operational decision making.  

During mission analysis, problem framing, and course of action development, planners and their supporting digital team develop mockups to decision-support tools required for the operation. Commanders evaluate decision-support tools and provide guidance during course of action comparison and approval steps. 

Data-first organizations conduct tabletop exercises to understand how data is collected, processed, and moved from the point of collection to the tool the decision maker will use. The data tabletop exercise is also used to help teams understand the context of the collected data, its authoritative source, modification history, and what it means inside a dashboard or decision-support tool. Digital teams finalize dashboards and decision-support tools during orders production and development. 

In a data-first organization, planners use artifacts from the planning process already stored and collaboratively updated to generate orders. During an operation in a data-first organization, leaders are alerted by digital tools at a decision point to help them understand the conditions and make operational decisions.  

Adopting and operationalizing the data-first mindset in the planning process is possible today using DOD’s data platform. Some defense organizations are already experimenting with these concepts and incorporating them into operational planning for real-world missions. Operational planning is just one of many areas where a data-first mindset will accelerate understanding and decision making—to make decision advantage a reality.