Chandra Donelson
Deputy Chief Data Officer, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Army
Since starting with the Department of Army, Chandra Donelson has done more than wrangle data; she has championed rapid change, synchronized operations to technology, and created a vast partner ecosystem across government, industry and academia.
Donelson has had several exciting accomplishments, including integrating multiple data management solutions, establishing the Army’s data governance program and leading an 18-month effort to create the first Army Intelligence Data Strategy.
“As the stewards of data, we take seriously the enormous responsibility and opportunity before us,” said Lt. Gen. Laura A. Potter, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, G-2. “In the years ahead, the Army Intelligence Data Strategy will help to structure and prioritize our efforts, as we continue our work to ensure the Army Intelligence and Security Enterprise (AISE) becomes more data-centric to enable a multi-domain operations capable Army to deploy, fight, and win our nation’s wars and collect, analyze, and deliver intelligence to America’s leaders in the decades to come. It also underpins so many AISE modernization efforts and efforts going on across the Department of Army.”
The Army G-2 released the Army Military Intelligence Data Strategy 2022-2025 in February.
Why Watch
For 2023, Donelson and her team will focus on maturing enterprisewide data governance; modernizing data services; scaling data and analytics capabilities; cultivating data literacy; and building a high-performing, diverse and adaptable workforce to respond to changing technology.
“A fundamental measure of our success will be the value we provide to operations,” she said. “Therefore, we will measure our success by our ability to accelerate delivery of modern data products and services to our consumers and the value we provide to commanders to enable decision dominance. This value will be a direct result of our ability to ensure that from computation to combat, we are delivering the right data to the right user in the right format, without sacrificing data quality.”
The Army will leverage partnerships with government, industry and academia to ensure AISE is agile and responsive to mission needs.
“We are undergoing a major modernization effort to deliver intelligence in support of Multi-Domain Operations,” said Leonel Garciga, the Army intelligence community CIO. “These efforts, coupled with the zettabytes of new data is expected to be generated each year by 2025 and the rapid advances in technology requires Army MI to increase data maturity and ensure that our Information Technology Enterprise is agile in delivering IT systems.”