navy ship
navy ship

Application Services, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud, Defense 3 MIN Read

Designing, Building and Implementing an Authoritative Data Environment (ADE) for the U.S. Navy

March 1st, 2022

In May of 2020, the U.S. Navy sought to develop a reporting process that would quickly and accurately deliver COVID-19 personnel data to leadership within the Navy and the Department of Defense. This included information about cases, transmissions and contact tracing, as well as sailor movements and potential exposure risk globally. This was the height of the global coronavirus pandemic, and the Navy quickly realized that monitoring multiple large, dynamic data streams was going to be more difficult than expected. To do it, they immediately turned to their new flagship data analytics environment, the MyNAVYHR Authoritative Data Environment (ADE) 2.0, which was designed, developed, and built by GDIT.

With ADE, we can reform - recruit to retire - with better data from our legacy systems, data access, and better reporting capabilities. We can also ingest data sets that are outside of our ecosystem to better understand and manage Navy manpower and personnel efforts.

Ken Johnson

Director of PMW240, which oversees the ADE

The origins of the Navy’s ADE 2.0 started back in 2017 when the Navy asked GDIT to help create an Authoritative Data Environment that would serve as a single, trusted source of data and provide persistent, accurate, and up-to-date personnel data to the Navy enterprise. After all, the ability to efficiently recruit, develop and retain more than 350,000 sailors throughout their careers requires a data environment that supports both descriptive and predictive analytics.

Our Approach

From that vision, GDIT created ADE 2.0 to serve as the Single Source of Truth for all Navy Enterprise HR Data. The GDIT team employed a commercial, off-the-shelf solution to create the updated ADE. The solution is a multi-domain data lake that consolidates duplicative information repositories into a single warehouse that is secure, stable, and accurate. In total ADE 2.0 enables greater integration and more effective management, while simultaneously increasing security and usability.

GDIT also armed the Navy with a state-of-the art tool set that supports data quality and governance that ensures the delivery of authoritative data. ADE 2.0 enables data-driven decisions through analysis and communication with dynamic and interactive dashboards and visualizations. This end-to-end solution has transformed an IT system that was rooted in ancient technology into a modern, data-driven environment, bringing the Navy one step closer to supporting the overarching DoD data strategy, which is to unleash informational assets to advance broader national defense interests.

In Action

Today, ADE 2.0, now known as the Enterprise Authoritative Data Environment (eADE), is the cornerstone of the Navy transformation effort providing an environment that is modern, scalable, governed, and secure. Moreover, eADE delivers significant savings by reducing the Navy’s overall IT footprint by empowering Navy leaders with the kind of business intelligence and data analytics capabilities they need to predict future HR needs and trends. Lastly, it provides a containerized environment to host and maintain critical enterprise applications, needed by the warfighter, that would otherwise be decommissioned through transformation.

We are proud to be a long-standing partner with the U.S. Navy, and to support them on their continued digital modernization journey. The eADE work is just one way we’re doing that and helping the Navy deliver on its mission on the land, on the sea and in the air.