Air Force Wants Help Finding 'Golden Nuggets' in Data

The Air Force is putting almost $10 million toward technology to help decision-makers process information faster. 

A Broad Agency Announcement searches for solutions that could help employees find "golden nuggets" in data, potentially by "fusing diverse data sources, filtering noise" or discovering "patterns of life."

The Air Force is currently gathering white papers under the BAA, which was originally posted last year. 

Any technology funded under the BAA would be used to minimize the amount of time users spend collecting data, and would also use machine-learning technology to "automate mundane tasks."

The Advanced Research and Development of Mission-Focused Analytics for a Decision Advantage, or ARMADA, is also intended to develop a platform that could house an analytics system, customized visualizations and a framework that could connect disparate data sources. Third parties should be able to use that platform to integrate their own features. 

ARMADA research could result in systems that can make recommendations about decisions "based on what data the user is interested in and has viewed"—it could also help manage and delegate tasks, or "automating common user actions such as routine queries," the BAA said. 

The program has two broad missions, according to the BAA: helping users increase their situational awareness— "perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future;" and developing "essential components to develop an enterprise software system."

The system would also need a security system that could restrict access to authorized user, use single single-on for authentication, and include audit logs; it should also be accessible on mobile devices, the BAA said.