Pentagon reductions set back critical AI-data platform

Personnel cuts are crippling progress on Advana, a Pentagon data platform that has been widely used in recent years to accelerate functions from logistics to finance to readiness—and which is key to the department’s AI plans, current and former defense and military officials say.

“You tell this organization to do ‘A.’ Then you cut contracted staff by 80 percent and you have a turnover of close to what, 60 percent? Things are going to break. Things are going to get delayed. We’re in both places,” said one defense official who asked for anonymity to speak freely.

In 2021, the Defense Department comptroller launched the “Advancing Analytics” platform—soon shortened to Advana—as an accounting tool that could help keep track of what the Pentagon was buying and where it was sending it. DOD leaders pushed commanders and offices “hard,” in the words of one official, to adopt it. Within months, Advana had some 20,000 users across 42 organizations, and Booz Allen Hamilton had a five-year, $674 million contract to help expand and maintain it.

Read more at Defense One