On February 8th, 2022, the Secretary of the Army stated, "My second objective is to ensure the Army becomes more data-centric and can conduct operations in contested environments, which will enable our ability to prevail on the future battlefield." In pursuing this objective, the ASA-ALT Principal Deputy directed the development of a Unified Data Reference Architecture (UDRA) to govern acquisition of data centric capabilities.
The UDRA describes Data Mesh principles to flatten and simplify the Army's data architecture for effective and efficient data driven decisions. The UDRA data mesh enables a shift from network and system centricity to data centricity by exchanging data in the form of Data Products which are decoupled from underlying systems. Source data is decentralized for ownership and management by domain experts responsible for producing Data Products with information subsets in response to consumer demands. In the data mesh governance is federated with a focus on data product interoperability instead of system standards and interfaces or network boundaries.