"We're not going to change bureaucracy as a whole," CDAO Craig Martell said. "We need to find the right gaps, the right places where we can leverage value and then that value is going to drive a virtuous cycle of change."
The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, Defense Digital Service and ADVANA teams will be officially subsumed into the new CDAO office at the start of the month.
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
The CDAO has established a governance working group looking through "40 different foundational documents" that reference pre-existing organizations before the CDAO or other roles and responsibilities the new office will take over, the deputy in charge said Wednesday.
The Pentagon wants at least $70 million for its Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve and $76.79 million for its Artificial Intelligence and Data Accelerator, budget documents show.
"I'm convinced we're going to be able to do some great things," Craig Martel told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview. "But they're going to be hard things. It's going to be a challenge."
“Her deep knowledge and relationships within DoD will ensure the CDAO navigates and cuts through the bureaucracy to get things done,” said John Sherman, acting chief digital and artificial intelligence officer and DoD chief information officer.
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
"So if you don’t have an integration layer like that, then you have to go find all of the data sources yourself... This is something we don’t have yet in the department,” Lt. Gen. Michael Groen told Breaking Defense.
The Defense Digital Service (DDS), the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) and the office of the Chief Data Officer (CDO) would all report up to a new individual, tentatively named the Chief Data & AI Officer.
"Joint always seems fun until we get into decisions about who governs this," joked Army CIO Raj Iyer.
Two types of expert teams will help the 11 Combatant Commands make better use of data for decision-making, the deputy Defense Secretary said.
Do more with less: streamline workflows, reduce duplication, invest upfront to save long-term.
"We're only as fast as our slowest process," said JAIC's Lane, who is applying AI, machine learning, automation, and other tech to boost DoD's efficiency.
The US has a narrow edge in its talent pool, its hardware and its algorithms, but China is ahead in accumulating data, deploying applications, and integrating different functions.
The RFP includes a guide to help startups, small businesses, and non-traditional defense contractors participate. AI ethics and security are focal points.
JAIC's plan to rapidly grow capabilities, which it will do via a series of monthly updates, reflects the current AI competition with adversaries, including China which has said it plans to dominate AI by 2030. "To a Marine, this is dangerous close," Lt. Gen. Michael Groen says.