The US military officially launched After teasing the program late last year, Unified Data Reference Architecture (UDRA) 1.0 has been released. UDRA 1.0 is focused on simplifying the Army's data architecture and streamlining data products across mission partnerships.
According to Jennifer Swanson, DASA(DES) Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Data – Engineering – Software), UDRA 1.0 is the result of a collaboration between the Army's Chief Information Officer and industry.
“This is big news! After much work and collaboration with industry, UDRA 1.0 has been officially co-signed. [Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology] ASA(ALT), CIO, and even on the streets. ” Said Swanson said in a LinkedIn post.
As part of the UDRA 1.0 release, the Army issued a supporting document outlining how it will help overcome the Army's challenge of becoming a “data-centric force.”
“UDRA provides a means to meet the Soldier's need for data by incorporating feedback mechanisms to improve the content and quality of data products. “Describe and define the service,” the service department said.
The new program includes “transport-independent data exchange that supports the full range of networks at all tiers and reduces data duplication and persistence.” It also leverages federal governance and enables automatic enforcement of global and local governance policies,” the Army said.
The main guiding principles of this new program are:
- Information and data are produced, exchanged, and consumed across the Army enterprise in the form of discoverable data products that align with VAULTIS objectives.
- Data products are available to consumers in a self-service manner.
- Creation and hosting of data products is decentralized rather than centralized.
- The design and schema of a data product is owned and controlled by the data domain that produces the data product.
- A data product's metadata is tightly coupled to the data product and contains all the information needed to discover, select, retrieve, and effectively consume and use the data product.
- Data products are created and improved in response to consumer demand and feedback.
- Consumers will not persist, reproduce, or share the data products they receive. However, a data domain may create aggregate data products derived from source data and upstream data products.and
- Compute governance enables automatic enforcement of data governance policies.
“DASA(DES) and ASA(ALT) invite innovators to fill the gap and help shape the future of early-stage reference architectures,” the Army said. “Recognizing the essential nature of our evolving frameworks and recognizing that frameworks are architectures, not products, our Innovation Exchange serves as a hub for collaboration, experimentation, and excellence.” ”