Strengthening Data Science Methods for Department of Defense Personnel and Readiness Missions (2017) / Chapter Skim
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7 Identifying P&R Opportunities and Implementing Solutions
7 Identifying P&R Opportunities and Implementing Solutions
Pages 99-122
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From page 99... ...
The study's charge was to develop a roadmap and implementation plan for integrating data analytics in support of decisions within the purview of the Office of the U nder Secretary of Defense (Personnel & Readiness) , referred to throughout the report as P&R.
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From page 100... ...
IMPROVE DATA QUALITY AND SHARING Data Quality DoD has made significant investments in improving its use of data and analytics for recruiting and pay over the past 40 years,2 by means such as sanctioning the creation of the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) to provide a common set of data records and turning to the federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs)
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From page 101... ...
. Readiness data have long suffered from this weakness, which in part led to the establishment of DRRS, with its emphasis on access to the underlying data files.
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From page 102... ...
For example, the time DMDC invests in assembling and cleaning data from the central personnel records results in a lag in the analysis compared to when the events actually took place. Likewise, although surveys are now generally administered via the Internet, the process of collecting, cleaning, and organizing the data usually takes weeks if not months, again introducing latency in the analytic process.
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From page 103... ...
Finding: Despite the substantial amount of data available on DoD personnel, the data may not be appropriate for DoD's analytic tasks, or they may necessitate considerable investment in constructing the variables of interest. Finding: Analyses developed to support the Secretary of Defense are often disjointed, one-off activities undertaken to respond to immediate questions and may lack a plan for future use of data or analytic methods.
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From page 104... ...
VA data illuminate other aspects of an individual's experience after leaving active duty (pursuit of further education via the GI Bill, treatment of medical issues that may derive from service, etc.)
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From page 105... ...
The use of social media and other outside data in support of P&R decision making is worth further examination. Although DoD warns its personnel to avoid posting information regarding their responsibilities online, many individuals maintain accounts with some degree of public access.
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From page 106... ...
There is a notion that access by more senior personnel of the bureaucracy to the underlying data sets might prove contentious, to say nothing of access by any "outsiders." The Services are reinforced in their preference for limiting access to data by their legal charge from Congress to organize, train, and equip military forces, while the role of the Secretary of Defense and his staff is to set policy and be politically responsible for the results.5 The desire to control data needs to be balanced against policy needs. Improving data sharing with FFRDCs could accelerate their research processes and allow enhanced opportunities for verification and validation 4 This process usually consists of establishing a cross-Service working group, often with representation from P&R, to reach agreement.
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From page 107... ...
From the policy analyst's perspective, perhaps the most important inno ation would be a forum or mechanism that would channel feedback v from the user about the data constructs that are needed for typical analytic tasks and the nature of the variables that would best meet those needs. Some entity, such as an Office of People Analytics or an expanded role of DMDC, with clear lines of responsibility under the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA)
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From page 108... ...
Recommendation 3: The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Per sonnel & Readiness) should identify incentives to enhance data sharing and collection, such as the following: • Tracking usage of data by source in repositories such as the Person Event Data Environment and periodically reporting back to data providers on usage (e.g., number of uses, who the users are, the nature of the study, or analysis the data contributed to)
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From page 109... ...
should establish a working group with rep resentation from the Services and other elements of the Department of Defense, as appropriate, to • Identify productive new fields and formats for personnel files, such as enabling the inclusion of unstructured data and free-form text in future records; • Identify opportunities for data sharing between Services and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel & Readiness) and within Services and lower barriers to such sharing; • Work with organizations that provide operational data or collect them for analysis to improve data quality by providing standard ways for data users to report problems with data collections and channel those reports back to data providers when appropriate; • Clarify self-reporting rules and practices; • Identify legal and regulatory barriers to the appropriate and respon sible sharing of data; and • Examine new hardware and software architectures that facilitate data access and data management.
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From page 110... ...
• Some PDE users say they have been given conflicting statements about the ownership of external data uploaded into the PDE. Recommendation 6: The Defense Manpower Data Center should assess how well the Person-Event Data Environment is working and whether it is serving its intended community.
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From page 111... ...
• Assess protocols for accessing personally identifiable information. • Review approval process for exporting analysis results.
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From page 112... ...
should encourage streamlining of Institutional Review Board processes that involve multiple organizations -- for example, federally funded r esearch and development centers and the Department of Defense. Recommendation 8: The Department of Defense should carry out re search on the feasibility of differential privacy methods for its personnel analytics.
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From page 113... ...
In doing so, the department should examine the applicability of Fair Information Practice Principles in the treatment of Defense Manpower Data Center data. Recommendation 10: The Defense Manpower Data Center, in its role as steward of the Person-Event Data Environment, should consider ways to adapt and use privacy and governance practices that the Office of Management and Budget has created for civilian use.
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From page 114... ...
• Creating incentives that guide DoD to an "optimal" mix of per sonnel. Increased use of prescriptive analytics could help inform staffing-level decisions for DoD personnel.
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From page 115... ...
• Ensuring the services supporting DoD personnel are properly structured and provided. Monitoring the services supporting DoD personnel is a data-intensive challenge, and so steps to improve access to data and effective use of data analytics would be help ful.
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From page 116... ...
m Some possible steps that might follow include these: • Emphasizing the use of prescriptive analytics in conjunction with predictive what-if scenarios; • Enhancing prescriptive analytics usage and disseminating best prac tices across the entire department; and • Adapting the prescriptive analytics methods successfully used in the private sector for workforce and talent management. Controlled Experiments Often P&R needs additional data to evaluate potential policy solutions, and the use of controlled experiments can sometimes provide those data.
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From page 117... ...
A case in point is the enthusiasm for 2-year enlistments, endorsed by some political leaders as a means of shifting the supply of enlistees (particularly those from socioeconomic backgrounds that would not otherwise normally lead to enlisted military service)
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From page 118... ...
It is n otable that DoD employs very few individuals with expertise in statistics and optimization, and many quantitatively trained analysts are classified as operations researchers, regardless of their actual training. Finding: Based on its collective experience with seeing data science mature in other organizations, the committee's judgment is that P&R's skills, depth, and resources in data analytics are not sufficient to rec ognize the full range of analytics opportunities and to implement these methods to better support decision making.
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From page 119... ...
If P&R desires more timely information, and information that is more complete relative to its needs -- including the ability to forecast and evaluate alternative policy decisions, which good policy debate requires -- it will need to consider additional investments. And it will need to devise mechanisms for controlling data access that on the one hand protect the variety of equities involved (including privacy)
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From page 120... ...
2014. Proposed Revisions to the Common Rule for the Protection of Human Subjects in the Behavioral and Social Sciences.
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From page 121... ...
2013. Life-Course Perspectives on Military Service.
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