The Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office has announced that it will partner with additional vendors under a new acquisition approach as part of efforts to scale Advana — DOD’s big data platform for advanced analytics — to meet the increasing needs and mission requirements of DOD customers.
CDAO said Tuesday that since 2021, the Advana platform has acquired the majority of lifecycle IT support services through the General Services Administration’s Federal Systems Integration and Management Center, or FEDSIM.
According to CDAO, opening Advana to more DOD-assisted acquisition providers will help facilitate the competition and vendor diversity needed to support prototyping efforts, improve access to high-quality data and enable the platform to accommodate future artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.
“As the Advana platform scales to meet growing needs of the Department, CDAO’s acquisition approach is evolving in parallel to allow for increased creativity, innovation, and flexibility to meet unique customer needs,” CDAO’s statement reads.
CDAO said Advana has more than 100,000 users supporting data products and business analytics applications across DOD and serves as the foundation of the Pentagon’s Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories — or Open DAGIR — framework.
Open DAGIR Framework
In May, CDAO launched Open DAGIR as a multivendor ecosystem to help protect industry’s intellectual property and government data ownership and scale AI, data and analytics capabilities.
“Open DAGIR brings the best industry has to offer to the Department. It allows us to ensure enduring access to government-owned, contractor-operated technology stacks and infrastructure and retain data rights while also maximizing the ability of other companies to develop applications with government data,” said CDAO head Radha Plumb.
CDAO will provide additional details on the Advana update at the Global Information Dominance Experiments, or GIDES, Insight Day, on Tuesday, July 16, in Reston, Virginia, and will soon announce the Advana Insight Day that it intends to host in early September.
