MAKING THE UK’S DATA & AI
STRATEGY FOR DEFENCE A REALITY
At the recent Think Data for Government event, Pivotl’s CEO James Herbert chatted to George Carter, Interim Chief Data Officer of Royal Air Force (RAF) about the realities of implementing the UK’s Defence Data and AI Strategy on the ground (and out in the field).
It was a candid insight into his approach, learns and what he hopes for the future. Here’s a run down of the video:
Setting up for success and beyond – George and his data team at the RAF work to three principles:
- Empowerment by giving people the tools to serve themselves by offering self serve tools – ensuring collaborative value is achieved from the vast array of technology chosen to solve different requirements.
- Champion data as a product, beginning with the outcome and doing a thin slice of architecture, policy, metadata management, cataloguing, analytics – breaking out of the cycle of a year of policy, a year of architecture, a year of ontology by which time the world has moved on.
- Work to Federated Governance principles which through local empowerment gives quite firm direction on data management, organisation and accountability.
One of the key learns for George and him team is not to under-estimate the need for ongoing promotion, engagement and road mapping to help bring the organisation along on the transformation.
Looking forward – it’s all about doing the hard work with data for the 20% of the organisation that isn’t served by the current data platform.
“If I think about decision making across the air forces operational landscape, there is an enormous potential to what we can do [with data].”
George Carter, Interim Chief Data Officer of The Royal Air Force
