 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is the seventh year of theCUBE's coverage of the MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium. We love getting to talk to these chief data officers and the people in this ecosystem, the importance of data, driving data-driven cultures and really happy to welcome to the program. First time guest, Aileen Vadrin. Aileen is the Chief Data Officer for the United States Air Force. Aileen, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Stu, really excited about being here today. All right, so the United States Air Force, I believe had its first CDO office in 2017. You were put in the CDO role in June of 2018. If you could, bring us back, give us how that was formed inside the Air Force and how you came to be in that role. Well, Stu, I'd like to say that we are a startup organization and a really mature organization. So it's really about culture change and it began by bringing a group of amazing citizen airmen, reservists, back to the Air Force to bring their skills from industry and bring them into the Air Force. So I like to say that we're a total force because we have active and reservists working with civilians on a daily basis. And one of the first things we did in June was we stood up a data lab that's based in the Jones Building on the Air Force Base. And there we actually take small use cases that have enterprise focus and we really try to dig deep to try to you drive data insights to inform senior leaders across the department on really important, what I would call enterprise focused challenges, which it's pretty exciting. Yeah, it's been fascinating when we've dug into this ecosystem. Of course, while the data itself is very sensitive and I'm sure for the Air Force, there's some very highest level of security, the practices that are done as to how to leverage data, the line between public and private blurs because you have people that have come from industry that go into government and people that have from government that have leveraged their experiences there. So if you could give us a little bit of your background and what it is that your charter's been and what you're looking to build out. As you mentioned that culture of change. Well, I'd like to say I began my data leadership journey as an active duty soldier in the Army and I was originally a transportation officer. Today we would use the title condition based maintenance but back then it was really about doing running the numbers so that I could optimize my truck fleet on the road each and every day so that my soldiers were driving safely and data has always been part of my leadership journey and so I like to say that one of our challenges is really to make sure that data is part of every airman's core DNA so that they're using the right data at the right level to drive insights whether it's tactical, operational or strategic and so it's really about empowering each and every airman which I think is pretty exciting. Yeah, there's so many pieces of that data. You talk about data quality, there's obviously the data life cycle. I know your presentation that you're given here at the CDOIQ talks about the data platform that your team has built. Could you explain that? What are the key tenants and what maybe differentiates it from what other organizations might have done? So when we first took the challenge to build our data lab we really wanted to really come up our goal was to have a cross-domain solution where we could solve data problems at the appropriate classification level and so we built the Vault data platform. Vault stands for visible, accessible, understandable, linked and trustworthy and if you look at the DOD data strategy they will also add the tenants of interoperability and secure. So the first steps that we have really focused on is making data visible and accessible to airman to empower them to drive insights from available data to solve their problems. So it's really about that data empowerment. We like to use the hashtag built by airman because it's really about each and every airman being part of the solution and I think it's really an exciting time to be in the Air Force because any airman can solve a really hard challenge and it can very quickly wrap the escalate up with great velocity to senior leadership to be an enterprise solution. So is there some basic training that goes on from a data standpoint for any of those that have lived in data? Oftentimes you can get lost in numbers, you have to have context, you need to understand how do I separate good from bad data or when is the data still valid? So how does someone in the Air Force get some of that beta data competency? Well, we have taken a multi-tenant approach because each and every airman has different needs. So we have quite a few pathfinders across the Air Force today to help what I call upscale our total force. And so I developed a partnership with the Air Force Institute of Technology and they now have a online graduate level data science certificate program. So individuals studying at AFID or remotely have the opportunity to really focus on building up their data touchpoints. Just recently, we have been working on a pathfinder to allow our data officers to get their ICCP date federal data sector governance certificate program. So we've been running what I would call short boot camps to prep data officers to be ready for that. And I think the one that I'm most excited about is that this year, this fall, new cadets at the US Air Force Academy will be able to have an undergraduate degree in data science. And so it's not about a one-prong approach. It's about having short courses as well as academe solutions to upscale our total force moving forward. Well, information absolutely is such an important differentiator in general in business and absolutely that the military aspects are there. You mentioned the DOD talks about interoperability in their platform. Can you speak a little bit to, you know, how you make sure that, you know, data is secure yet I'm sure there's opportunities for other organizations for there to be collaboration between them. Well, we, I like to say that we don't fight alone. So I work on a daily basis with my peers, Tom Cecella at the Department of Navy and Greg Garcia at the Department of Army, as well as Mr. David Spurk at the DOD level. It's really important that we have an integrated approach moving forward. And in the DOD, we partner with our security experts. So it's not about us doing security individually. It's really about in the Air Force, we use a term called digital Air Force and it's about optimizing and building a trusted partnership with our CIO colleagues as well as our chief management colleagues because it's really about that trusted partnership between to make sure that we're working collaboratively across the enterprise and whatever we do in the department, we also have to reach across our services so that we're all working together. Yeah, Aileen, I'm curious if there's been much impact from the global pandemic. When I talked to enterprise companies, that they had to rapidly make sure that while they needed to protect data when it was in their four walls and maybe through VPN, now everyone is accessing data much more work from home and the like. I have to imagine some of those security measures you've already taken, but have there anything along those lines or anything else that the shift in where people are and a little bit more dispersed has impacted your work? Well, the story that I like to say is that this has given us velocity. So prior to COVID, we built our Vault Data Platform as a multi-tenancy platform that is also a cross-domain solution. So it allows people to develop and do their problem solving in an appropriate classification level and it allows us to connect or push up if we need to into higher classification levels. The other thing that has just helped us really work smart because we do as much as we can in that unclassified environment and then using our cloud-based solution in our gateways. It allows us to bring people in at a very scheduled component so that we optimize their time on site. And so I really think that it's really given us great velocity because it has really allowed people to work on the right problem set, on the right classification level at a specific time. And so I really think that and plus the other pieces we look at what we're doing is that the problem set that we've had has really allowed people to become more data focused. I think that it's personal for folks moving forward. So it has increased understanding in terms of the need for data insights as we move forward to drive decision-making. It's not that data makes the decision but it's using the insight to make the decision. Well, and one of the interesting conversations we've been having about how to get to those data insights is the use of things like machine learning, artificial intelligence, anything you can share about how you're looking at that journey, where you are along that kind of discovery. Well, I like to say that in order to do AI and machine learning, you have to have great volumes of high-quality data. And so really step one was visible accessible data. But we in the department of the Air Force stood up an accelerator at MIT. And so we have a group of amazing airmen that are actually working with MIT on a daily basis to solve some of those what I would call opportunities for us to move forward. My office collaborates with them on a consistent basis because they're doing additional use cases in that academic environment, which I'm pretty excited about because I think it gives us access to some of the smartest minds. All right, Eileen, also I understand it's your first year doing the event. Unfortunately, we don't get all come together in Cambridge, walking those hallways and being able to listen to some of those conversations and follow up is something we've very much enjoyed over the years. What excites you about being interact with your peers and participating in the event this year? Well, I really think it's about helping each other leverage the amazing lessons learned. I think that if we look collaboratively both across industry and in the federal sector, there have been amazing lessons learned and it gives us a great forum for us to really share and leverage those lessons learned as we move forward so that we're not pitting the reboot button but we actually are starting faster. So it comes back to the velocity component. It all helps us go faster and at a higher quality level and I think that's really exciting. So final question I have for you, we've talked for years about digital transformation. We've really said that having that data strategy and that culture of leveraging data is one of the most critical pieces of having gone through that transformation. For people that are maybe early on their journey, any advice that you'd give them having worked through a couple of years of this in the experience you've had with your peers? I think that the first thing is that you have to really start with a blank slate and really look at the art of the possible. Don't think about what you've always done. Think about where you want to go because there are many different paths to get there and if you look at what the target goal is, it's really about making sure that you do that backward tracking to get to that goal. And the other piece that I tell my colleagues is celebrate the wins. My team of Airmen, they are amazing. It's an honor to serve them and the reality is that they are doing great things and sometimes you want more and it's really important to celebrate the victories because it's a very long journey and we keep moving the goalpost because we're always striving for excellence. Absolutely, it is always a journey that we're on. It's not about the destination. Eileen, thank you so much for sharing all that you've learned and glad you could participate. Thank you, Stu. I appreciate being included today. Have a great day. Thanks and thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more from the MIT CDO IQ event.