Partnership further accelerates the adoption of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence
Mountain View, CA (June 5, 2024) — The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) on June 4, 2024, at the DIU headquarters in Mountain View, CA. The MOA was signed by Dr. Radha Plumb, the CDAO, and Douglas Beck, Director of DIU and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense.
“CDAO and DIU are natural teammates in advancing DoD’s adoption of innovative digital capabilities,” said DIU Director Doug Beck. “CDAO’s leadership in driving enterprise-level architecture, tools, and policy makes them an invaluable partner in DIU’s core mission of bringing commercial capability to the warfighter with the focus, speed, and scale required to deter major conflict, or win if forced to fight. This partnership will help us help our commercial partners to scale their impact, fast.”
"The close partnership with DIU will enable us to bring the best of industry into our enterprise infrastructure to provide crucial digital and AI capabilities" said Dr. Radha Plumb, the CDAO, "DIU's mission and proven track record in identifying and adopting commercial technologies will allow CDAO to further accelerate the adoption of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence getting the best tech capabilities into the hands of our warfighters."
The DIU-CDAO MOA codifies the collaboration necessary to ensure expeditious, mission-oriented implementation of commercially-available data, computation, software, and AI technologies. Specifically, it covers four key areas of collaboration between CDAO and DIU:
Scaling commercial AI into DoD;
Accelerating autonomy development and fielding;
Experimenting with digital technologies for CJADC2; and
Collaborating on Department-level policy and governance efforts to accelerate AI and autonomy development and fielding and digital technologies adoption.
CDAO is the Department of Defense’s (DoD) organization responsible for the acceleration of the department’s adoption of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has the mission of providing enterprise-level infrastructure and services, as well as scaling proven secure digital and AI-enabled solutions for enterprise and joint use cases. CDAO leverages relevant dual-use commercial technologies and novel operating models to enable all DoD organizations to quickly develop, test, integrate and deliver secure, data, analytic, and AI capabilities to achieve their missions.
DIU is the DoD’s organization responsible for leading the adoption of commercial technologies to solve warfighter problems for strategic impact at speed and scale, in support of the National Defense Strategy. It serves as the principal liaison between the DoD and the national security innovation base, and with its companies and investors, and coordinates and advises efforts within the DoD, and with interagency and international partners, on matters related to the development, procurement, and fielding of commercially derived technology.