This DON CIO guidance will recognize the need for centralized, collaborative planning and decentralized execution. Most importantly, it will reflect the results of DON-wide collaboration. Although this is a very simple example, consider the impact of information systems exchanging codes that are derived from different sources. In a tactical environment, friendly forces could be mistakenly identified as foes. Once captured, the metadata can then be analyzed to support the development of data architectures as well as identify redundancies and inconsistencies in existing databases.
Efficiencies can be significant.
The number of data elements was reduced from 18,000 to 2,200. Over 20 million lines of code were reduced to 12 million, and 35 subsystems were consolidated into 6. The benefits of improved effectiveness, particularly in the tactical environment, can significantly outweigh cost savings. During a recent analysis of metadata captured from two different shipboard threat-warning systems, differing representations for identifying threat levels were discovered. Although these systems may not currently exchange these data values, the potential for exchange in the future may be a possibility.