Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO) - Dem/Val Activities

The CDAO Chief Technology Officer (CTO) position no longer exists or manages resources.

The mission of the AI/ML Scaffolding project was developing, providing, brokering, and advising on the infrastructure, data, tools, services, and best practices needed to accelerate appropriate AI/ML development and adoption. For FY2026, AI/ML Scaffolding funds were realigned to Alpha-1. Previous projects funded by AI/ML Scaffolding have been reprioritized under Alpha-1 or have concluded.

Requested funding would support skills assessment, training programs, and learning management for data and AI workforce tracking and reporting.

CDAO’s Foundational Enablers efforts in this PE include: • Acquisition Ecosystem: provides rapid, effective, and efficient acquisition support to CDAO and DoD at large (through decentralized offerings) by providing contracting capabilities, guidance, and training for the acquisition workforce on AI. The CDAO Acquisition Ecosystem provides several types of contracting mechanisms / vehicles such as CSOs, OTAs, BOAs, and BPAs; expedited contracting processes; and AI-driven tools to streamline federal procurements. (Moves to project code 786 in FY26.) • Advana Platform: Advana is DoD’s enterprise data acquisition, data operations, and data analytics capabilities within a government and military-owned environment hosted in DoD and NGA clouds, as well as available at the edge. Advana delivers 24/7 continuous operations on NIPR, SIPR, JWICS, SUNet, and Edge environments and supports a rapidly growing user community that now exceeds 100,000+ users, 500+ data connections, hosts the DoD Federated Data Catalog, hosts the DSD Pulse applications, and provides a DevSecOps pipeline to field 3rd party applications on DoD data. The “Creating Data Advantage” Memo, signed by DSD on 5 May 2021, directs that “The Advancing Analytics (Advana) platform is the single enterprise authoritative data management and analytics platform for the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Principal Staff Assistants (PSAs), with inputs from all DoD Components”. (Moves to new BA08 Pilot PE0608140D8Z in FY26) • Secure Unclassified Network (SUNet) Enterprise: SUNet is a National Security System used as an AI development environment and multi-national collaboration & data sharing environment for non-traditional partners (e.g., Sky Blue). Its unique capabilities include: - Unique and Extensible US Government Platform: Designed as an Open Architecture, Non-Proprietary USG capability - Internet accessible, GIG-Waiver precludes special hardware/software required to access, alternative MFA - Supports commercial, non-traditional development, and non-CAC multi-national partners; government (IL-5) and Industry Data Protection; Hybrid, On-Prem, Multi-cloud Enterprise. - AI Development & Non-Traditional Partner Data Sharing used to deploy 250+ AI models, label 208+ million objects, and build over 1,000+ models from 30+ vendors - Partner collaboration platform for 25+ international partners, multiple mission profiles (SUNet moves to new BA08 Pilot PE0608140D8Z in FY26) • CDAO Centrally Managed Support: Centrally managed support provides basic and advanced workforce enabling tools to empower the CDAO to advance mission for DoD. (These activities conclude by FY26.) • Defense Digital Services (DDS): The Defense Digital Services (DDS) effort provides DoD with highly-technical expertise to advise on and rapidly develop, prototype, and deploy digital solutions to meet the needs of the warfighter and the policymaker. Digital solutions provided by this effort include prototypes, technology assessments of government digital services, cybersecurity solutions via bug bounties, and surging digital services for crises response. (These activities conclude by FY26.) • Enterprise Platforms and Capabilities (EPC) Data Engineering, Data Operations, and Data Governance: Implements enterprise data acquisition, data engineering, data governance, data cataloging, and data integration capabilities available to 100,000+ Advana users and is required to support several top-priority CDAO use cases across the Department. These top-priority use cases include DSD Pulse metrics, the DoD Audit, the Federated Data Catalog, GIDE, J4 Operational Logistics, J35S Orion, J8 GFMDI, J7 JEXNET, all BASI products, and 300+ production applications hosted in the Advana platform. This effort also develops and sustains the expanding the number of enterprise data connections feeding data from Authoritative Data Sources (ADS) into the Federated Data Catalog hosted in Advana. This effort manages and currently sustains 500+ active data connections feeding data into the Federated Data Catalog. (EPC moves to new BA08 Pilot PE0608140D8Z in FY26.)

This is a continuation of the initial FY24 Management Innovation Pilot (H.R. 118-121) and seeks to improve warfighter lethality and DoD efficiency by using data, analytics, and AI to modernize business practices across CDAO and DoD. Funding will extend select FY2024-25 efforts into FY26.

Funding supports two focus areas: Acquisition of AI: Sharing creative approaches across the acquisition workforce to improve agility, speed, and mission utility to improve acquiring AI and software-based commercial capabilities. AI For Acquisition: Development and sustainment of DoD acquisition and contracting processes that provide the agility and rapid procurement of AI-enabled commercial solutions needed to meet evolving mission needs.