Chief Data Office announces capabilities for the VAULT Data Platform

  • Published
  • Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs

The Air Force Chief Data Office announced today additional capabilities for the Visible, Accessible, Understandable, Linked and Trusted Data Platform. The VAULT Platform is designed to provide Airmen with cyber secure, cloud-based tools to connect, find, share and learn from Air Force data to improve readiness and mission success.

The VAULT Platform now has a set of tools to support a full lifecycle of data exploitation activities. It is now possible to ingest data, manage storage, manage metadata, manipulate, cleanse and experiment with data and visualize analytics results. The data sets and the applications have access controls that today are group and role based. The visualization service supports multiple user groups leveraging a common application platform.

“With these capabilities now realized on the VAULT Platform we can fully harness the power of data to make timely decisions and achieve mission success,” said Col. Charles Destefani, Air Force Chief Data Office acting deputy chief data officer and lead data architect. “This development further aligns the technology, business operations and data management capabilities to enable the acting secretary’s vision of a Digital Air Force.”

According to Destefani, users have access to multiple tools and systems for data ingestion onto the VAULT Platform. Users can directly upload data, transfer it or schedule recurring data refreshes; all of which keeps the VAULT Platform populated with timely information available for enterprise use. For example, the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center innovation office and Air Force Chief Data Office successfully built AFIMSC’s highly popular Installation Health Assessments using a visualization tool hosted on the VAULT Platform. This effort saved the Air Force months of intense labor and provided more accurate and actionable data analysis for Air Force leadership about installation health, according to the Chief Data Office and AFIMSC officials.

Users have access to tools that enable better management of storage and metadata.

“The storage management capability allows for the browsing, querying and exploration of data sets which enables data to remain visible to users,” said Sherri Hanson, Chief Data Office director of operations. “This capability allows users to populate the Enterprise Information Model with the business and technical metadata related to their data set. This makes the data searchable and discoverable to the Air Force enterprise as required for compliance with the OPEN Data Act.”

New tools added to enhance data manipulation, cleaning and experimentation will increase the effectiveness of using data for making decisions.

“Users can perform data cleansing, experiment with tools, and more,” Destefani said. “They can perform machine learning training and/or artificial intelligence prototypes, as well as create charts and graphs. The applications are limitless as new tools and libraries can be added quickly to meet mission needs.”

Users will also be able to display and manipulate information using custom applications.

“Airmen can leverage the power of heat maps, animations, multi-dimensional charting and more to present status dashboards to leadership at all levels,” Hanson said. “This will visually optimize data-driven decisions and allow new insights into mission activities.”

For more information about the Air Force Chief Data Office and to request access to the VAULT Platform visit https://org2.eis.af.mil/sites/13007/Pages/DD_form_2875.aspx.