Advana began in 2021 as the Defense Department comptroller's "Advancing Analytics" accounting platform to track purchases and shipments. Leaders rapidly promoted adoption, reaching about 20,000 users across 42 organizations and securing a five-year, $674 million Booz Allen contract. Within a year Advana helped coordinate with European partners to track munitions and supplies to Ukraine. Adoption expanded to more than 72,000 users by 2023, producing far more data than expected and straining the system. In June 2024 the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office paused development to improve the user interface and strengthen architecture. Large contractor cuts (about 80%) and near-60% turnover have caused delays and breakdowns.
Personnel cuts are crippling progress on Advana, a Pentagon data platform that has been widely used in recent years to accelerate functions from logistics to finance to readiness-and which is key to the department's AI plans, current and former defense and military officials say. "You tell this organization to do 'A.' Then you cut contracted staff by 80 percent and you have a turnover of close to what, 60 percent? Things are going to break. Things are going to get delayed. We're in both places," said one defense official who asked for anonymity to speak freely.
In 2021, the Defense Department comptroller launched the "Advancing Analytics" platform-soon shortened to Advana-as an accounting tool that could help keep track of what the Pentagon was buying and where it was sending it. DOD leaders pushed commanders and offices "hard," in the words of one official, to adopt it. Within months, Advana had some 20,000 users across 42 organizations, and Booz Allen Hamilton had a five-year, $674 million contract to help expand and maintain it.
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