Monday, May 28, 2012

RDML Tighe - BIG data

"You can go to almost any mission area or functional area in the United States Navy and think about how much of our human capital gets spent diving into various databases and then manually aggregating it," she said. "If we could get to a place where our data is in a cloud that's understandable, that's smartly tagged, that's discoverable, we could easily get to solutions that don't require so much human intervention. That lets the humans deal with the higher-order thinking that's required to make those decisions."

That's the next step, Tighe said, and it's a lot easier said than done. The Navy's IT architecture isn't poised to free the data from the systems that house it, and neither are its policies.

"What we're thinking is along the lines of a big data-type approach," she said. "We need to ingest data in a way that lets us understand it well and share it across a number of different mission areas. We need to get to a more standardized way of dealing with data, and particularly big data."

Tighe said the big data issue isn't really a technological problem, as Amazon and Google have proven with their own decentralized cloud based information systems. Rather, it's a policy problem the Navy, and DoD as a whole, need to overcome by rethinking things such as identity management, and collapsing networks that don't inter-operate with one another.

Full Article from Federal News Radio is HERE.

And, more on BIG DATA here.

RDML Tighe is Director, Decision Superiority, OPNAV N2N6F4.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Big data sounds a lot like B.S.

Mike Lambert said...

Anon @ 11:26

Instead of smart ass comments, try to gain a better understanding. You can educate yourself here

http://www.datadirect.com/docs/public/whitepapers/reprint-understing-big-data.pdf

Anonymous said...

Got BIG data. Need applied BIG data.

No Naval Officer should be able to have more than two consecutive tours away from the Sea. Ever!!

(This is not specifically aimed at RDML T. but it is an indictment of the senior staff/beltway culture that produces/supports such things as 'BIG data' when the real Navy is hurting for real solutions)

Mike Lambert said...

Anon @ 1:21PM

Big Data is a Big Problem requiring a real solution.

What problem would you like for her to solve?

Anonymous said...

"Big Data is not fundamentally a new topic; it is simply a recognition that the total volume of data residing on company servers and within accessible internet locations is now exceeding conventional management, processing and analytic techniques."

Someone with a real understanding of Moore's 'law' would say 'DUH'. They would also say that we have been chasing our tail for many years and there is nothing in the human condition that will keep us from continuing the behavior - despite what Einstein says about those who repeat themselves expecting a different outcome.

"Policy problem"!? Far from it. Mandates from above (OPNAV?) will not change the environment. We're still waiting for a game changing idea. (Sorry. I have no suggestions. I'm not that smart.)

Anonymous said...

Finally, something I agree with! The Navy has how many different databases??? And not a single one of them "talk" to each other. If Google or Amazon operated like this....they would have been out of business years ago!