Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 37 C4ISR are acquiring data and can't send it any- where." But when this does arrive, he said, we're all going to drown unless we've de- veloped the means to adapt to it. To do so we need to "become digitally aquatic" and "swim in the deluge of data." He pointed out that we need to under- stand our relationship with data, as data in and of itself can completely disable you. He highlighted an example of an organization that harvests four terabytes of data every second and only uses four gigabytes of it. If data is to be good in and of itself, you have to be able to do something with it. That is why we need to develop a relationship with data and the governance structure of it. And this will bring us to the tipping point of using sufficient data to make linkages that are inherent to create PDSA. The NDOIC One way to help solve this problem is through the National Defence Operations Intelligence Centre (NDOIC), which ultimately will become the forcing func- tion. The new NDOIC will be comprised of the Canadian Joint Operations Com- mand, Canadian Special Operations Forc- es Command, space and cyber personnel housed in one building for the fusion of operations and plans for the CAF. This will probably become the heart of the cen- trality of data and artificial intelligence, ac- cording to BGen Anderson. He pointed out that the CAF is spend- ing a lot of money purchasing 4th and 5th generation capabilities. With these capa- bilities come massive amounts of data that enable us to win. But there is a shortage of linkages and the ability to process the data. "The NDOIC is a great opportunity to force us to achieve the true benefits of big data." Through an ecosystem that reaches across the six domains and external part- nerships of other governmental depart- ments, Allies, partners, industry, aca- demia, and the public, all fused through digitization by employing AI, analytics, cloud, IoT, automation, the NDOIC will become a capability and not a building – a capability that will help the CAF adapt and remain operationally relevant in years to come. The legal, intelligence and ethi- cal perspectives of surveillance In continuing the theme of data, a pan- el comprising of LGen D. Michael Day (Ret'd), Jessica Davis from Insight Threat Intelligence, and Leah West and Stepha- nie Carvin from Carleton University spoke about the legal and ethical implications of the collection of data. Data needs to be considered through the lens of legal and ethics. The world is leaving Canada behind on how it thinks about the legal structures and consent as it relates to data. "If indus- try, academia, and government don't work together on this and we don't have leading voices, we will continue to fall further and further behind," said Day. "This issue has not received a lot of attention and needs to be thought of as not three separate compo- nents but as a complete whole." Digitization People often get confused between the meaning of digitization and digital. Digi- tization, as Jodie Wallis from Accenture explained, is about taking artifacts and converting them into something that can be stored and retrieved digitally, whereas digital is changing the fundamental way an organization operates. Wallis, BGen An- derson, Michael Daly from Raytheon and Christiana Cavazzoni from DND discussed the topic of digitization during the event. To push digitization forward, change needs to start at the top with a leader who is not afraid to put himself on the line to ensure that the processes and conversion are made to digitize. It also requires think- ing differently about how to evolve with the next generation of technology. JEDI Sharon Woods, a member of the Senior Ex- ecutive Service (SES) who currently serves as the Director and Program Manager for the Cloud Computing Program Office (CCPO) in the U.S. Department of De- fense (DoD), Office of the Chief Informa- tion Officer, presented a keynote on JEDI. The CCPO is responsible for the acquisi- tion and execution of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program. JEDI is DoD's pathfinder, General Purpose enterprise-wide cloud initiative that will provide the foundational commercial cloud technologies to support the warfighter. Woods delved into four reasons she be- lieves that led to JEDI becoming an ini- tiative for the U.S government: mission focus, leadership, tools of legitimacy, and personnel. She shared lessons of JEDI and how that by keeping on the path they are able to move forward with the program. Converting tactical data Another panel headed by Col Richard Fawcett (Ret'd) discussed how the Air Force, Army, and Navy are converting tactical data into operational effect. Mem- bers of the panel included: Maj Jason Fur- long, Project Director, RPAS, Directorate of Air Requirements 8, Royal Canadian Air Force; Capt(N) Sheldon Gillis, Direc- tor Naval Requirements, Royal Canadian Navy; and Col Yannick Lemieux, Director Land Command Information, Canadian Army. The importance of tactical data can- not be overstated in the operations of the CAF. Data collected from various sensors are fused into different systems to help make decisions. As the CAF becomes more reliant on data, data analytics is becoming more increasingly important in operations. Agile, resilient network The final panel for the day focused on delivering an agile, resilient network to enable C4ISR readiness. MGen Earl D. Matthews (Ret'd) of Verodin, Inc. led the discussion with Eric Lariviere from DND, Leslie Bayford from Pleora, and Bruce Carruthers from CORD3 Innovation Inc. They focused on how to factor the user experience, adding to networks without compromising security, safely improving connectivity and designing systems to gain maximum efficiencies. The next C4ISR and Beyond event will take place in January 2021. Stay tuned to Vanguard over the next few months for more from the conference in video and ar- ticle format. For timely updates and news as it relates to C4ISR, join our C4ISR LinkedIn group. To push digitization forward, change needs to start at the top with a leader who is not afraid to put himself on the line to ensure that the processes and conversion are made to digitize. It also requires thinking differently about how to evolve with the next generation of technology.

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