Unified Data Reference Architecture (UDRA) – What is it?
The Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology (ASA-ALT) Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (DASA) for Data, Engineering, and Software (DES) is defining a Unified Data Reference Architecture that introduces Data Mesh principles into the Army’s data architecture. Data Mesh is a data architecture based on a federated and decentralized approach to analytical data production, sharing, access, and management in complex and large-scale environments, within or across organizations. It is characterized by federated computational governance, self-service infrastructure, treating and providing data as a product, and autonomous data domains that are responsible for their data. The Unified Data Reference Architecture (UDRA) is intended to guide the implementation of interoperable data sharing across all Army acquisition programs.
In Development: Our UDRA Reference Implementation
Our reference implementation represents the cornerstone of our initial offering – a real-world application of the UDRA framework. , allowing for early experimentation and validation against the provided services and components allowing vendors to demonstrate conformance and/or capture lessons learned to inform improved product development.
What is within the first phase of the UDRA Experimentation?
The initial phase of this offering will provide limited services as part of the reference implementation, and experimentation will address targeted priority use cases and solutions against the state of maturity of the implementation. As our reference implementation expands and matures, more opportunities to expand on scope of solutions and capabilities for experimentation and demonstration will be iteratively released and announced.
Currently seeking these Solutions for Specific Use Cases/Services:
We are actively seeking vendors and software solutions that adhere to the principles of our data mesh reference architecture. We are particularly interested in solutions serving as data catalogs within the framework of UDRA. If your offering aligns with our vision and UDRA service descriptions of a data catalog capability, we invite you register to the Army Innovation Exchange and submit a UDRI Test Request.
To learn more about UDRA and better establish your solutions alignment to the reference architecture, we recommend you review the following resources:
The UDRA RFI Documentation, is a white paper call notice is published on sam.gov providing guidance on white paper content that must be submitted with company registration to Innovation Exchange. Updates will be made reflecting new solutions we are seeking for specific use cases/services alignment to the reference implementation maturity and impacts.
A pre-brief engagement with vendors will outline process of participation, methods and requirements for obtaining architecture artifacts, API documentation, Integration guidance, specific demonstration objectives, and infrastructure entrance criteria.
Important Note
Any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and/or sensitive information submitted during registration will be held as Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). You should NOT submit any Classified information or Privately held Intellectual Property or content. Only provide what is already publicly available.