COMUSAFE proposes future of global AF information sharing

  • Published
  • By Capt. Elizabeth Culbertson
  • U.S. Air Forces in Europe Public Affairs
LONDON (USAFENS) --  Representing the U.S. Air Force, the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe proposed an avenue to knowledge-based operations at the Royal United Services Institute Air Power Conference here May 24.

Gen. Tom Hobbins, speaking to an audience of British, French, Australian and American civil and military aviation leaders, said that the key to improving joint and coalition operations today is to achieve decision superiority through knowledge-based operations.

“It’s a world of being truly interdependent…it takes us to some interesting decisions in the command and control world,” said the general.

In his previous position as Air Force Chief of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer, General Hobbins was a strong proponent for increasing network capabilities and moving information and data efficiently. The general said that although the network is improving, it’s about more than that now.

“It’s about managing the content that rides on those networks, managing that content in a manner that leads to knowledge-based operations,” he said. “It’s not about file plans. It’s not about electronic records. But it’s about powerful storage schema; it’s about powerful, data-recognizing search engines, and it’s about collaboration.”

The general explained that the average office employee spends 30 percent of their work day trying to locate information. The problem, he said, is not that the information doesn’t exist, but that it has not been properly filed and tagged. Instead, it is confined within a specific application or functional area.

“The information is there, but unfortunately it’s not discoverable,” he said. “We have created digital landfills. We have stovepipes of large quantities of data in areas like personnel and logistics…where they recreate data over and over again.”

To that end, General Hobbins proposed implementing a new way to manage and share data, a way to shift information technology systems away from running applications to enabling Airmen to accomplish tasks.

“Why not create an information management enterprise service that connects all (functionals’ data) and then moves it forward…and shares that data (with the user) in a task-based process environment?”

Moving to task-based operations would save time for the user, so rather than having users focus on learning to use computer applications to accomplish their tasks, the task-based process would pull the appropriate application forward for the user.

In our Air Force, on shared networks, there are more than 386 million files stored and only 30 percent of them are being used. The new system that the general proposed would process and tag data so that it can not only be re-used across the enterprise, but efficiently managed.

A standard Air Force taxonomy, or classification system, would be used to identify all of our information. Information “tags” called “metadata” would contain details about the data it described, thereby making electronic information more accessible.

“[Taxonomy] helps us index and establish life cycle for the data. Also, think of it as a bar code. Bar codes have lines of information. They work pretty well because they tell you what a product is, what the cost is, quantity, color, etc….but the problem with bar codes is that they don’t share what the relationship is between the bars. For that you need to create metadata,” said General Hobbins.

Metadata specifies where the data is, who uses it, who created it, etc. When information is electronically tagged with metadata, he said, Airmen will be able to spend less time looking for information and more time acting on it.

Once we have categorized our information with our taxonomy and tagged the information with metadata, our warfighters have greater access to Air Force information. This process, said General Hobbins, has implications for joint and coalition environments.

The topic, said Col. Steven Spano, USAFE communications director, “highlighted an important and emerging mission area that has enormous operational relevance in air power and shortening the kill chain.”

The essence of decision superiority, he explained, is getting timely, accurate and relevant information and knowledge to the right person, wherever and whenever needed.

Colonel Spano said he felt the audience was receptive to the general’s speech.

“The subject resonated because, as operators, they can relate personally, and through experiences, to the importance that information and knowledge play at all levels and the full range of military operations,” said Colonel Spano. “The fleeting nature of targets demands more enhanced tools and processes that can create, archive, discover, share and collaborate on information and knowledge. This was a perfect forum to highlight this subject.”