Speed is crucial to innovation, and the Defense Department has established a new group to speed the flow of information to innovators around the military. 

The Transition Tracking Action Group looks to improve the department’s ability to track transitions from the initial stages of research and development to fielded capabilities in the hands of warfighters, said Cyrus Jabbari, the chief data officer to the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. 

The group “represents a new approach to technology portfolio management that leverages advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to provide DOD officials with the insights [they need] to make informed, innovative decisions,” Jabbari said.  

Specifically, the group enables DOD to better align investments with strategic objectives at scale, he said. The group will also allow the department to identify and eliminate waste and duplication and accelerate its ability to field new technologies. 

The bipartisan Congressional Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Reform also stressed this need in their report issued earlier this year.  

The group is building an enterprise-wide, data-driven understanding of all technologies DOD invests in and manages them from initial stages of research to the hands of warfighters, Jabbari said.  

DOD is a huge enterprise and collecting this information is a monumental task on its own. “While the department has long sought to address this decades-old problem, it previously lacked the necessary tools and capabilities at scale to track technology transitions effectively,” the chief data officer said. “This has the potential to save DOD millions, if not billions, of dollars — in addition to obvious savings in man-hours from manual requests for information.  

“The group is integrating business systems and deploying data analytics capabilities that enable greater visibility and management of technology transition efforts,” Jabbari said. The group focuses on increasing transparency and understanding of where DOD’s investments exist and align, and their outcomes. Officials “can better gauge and strengthen allocation of resources amidst a global race for technological advantage,” he said.  

A senior defense official also commented, “the Transition Tracking Action Group will not only help us deliver insights and capabilities to the warfighter, but it will also help the DOD and its partners in industry and academia realize the national economic impact of our early stage research and investments that are later productized and oftentimes even bought back by the department.” 

The group can sift through DOD’s data to see how investments align to critical technology areas. These changes allow officials to put money where it will do the most good. 

The group has mapped the defense innovation system, evaluating economic impacts, streamlining the journey of technologies from concept to combat readiness and preventing investment duplications across DOD’s research and engineering enterprise, Jabbari said. “Since its February 2024 inauguration, [the group] has accomplished a wide range of goals to collect data and track technology transitions by building applications and artificial intelligence tools within DOD’s unified Advancing Analytics — Advana — platform,” he said. “By connecting the native financial and procurement data sources with newly created and connected datasets and analytic techniques, the group is delivering new insights to answer critical business questions.” 

One example of this ability is a tool that enables DOD to map $800 billion in research, development, test and evaluation contract obligations and expenditures back to Congressionally appropriated programs and activities in real time, Jabbari said. “The group will augment this capability with enriched information fielded from thousands of points of contact across the defense innovation ecosystem — from program owners to performers — to deliver new insights on technology investments and transition pathways,” he said. “These developments utilize advanced methodologies including automation, natural language processing and increased querying capabilities.” 

More is coming, he said. The group has pilot programs that will build on the accomplishments to date. “The applications will mature to give senior leadership more visible, accessible, understandable and secure data analytics tools to assist in making informed decisions,” Jabbari said. “These tools are already reducing the burden, costs and errors of manual data calls and empowering DOD to discover information quickly, with high fidelity, and communicate it effectively. Transparency and visibility will undoubtedly enhance our ability as a department and as a nation to create and field capabilities at speed and scale.”

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