On Thursday (17 October, 2024), NATO launched a new initiative to foster secure data sharing at speed and scale to further enhance situational awareness and data-driven decision-making.
The Alliance Data Sharing Ecosystem (ADSE) for defence and security will support the implementation of NATO's digital transformation and its efforts in rapidly adopting dual-use technologies. It will leverage existing capabilities across the NATO Enterprise, Allied government agencies, industry and academia, and other key stakeholders. The pilot phase will run until the end of 2025, and initially focus on public and unclassified data to support four priority areas: the security of critical undersea infrastructure; geospatial awareness; information environment assessment, and maritime situational awareness.
Connecting the ADSE with other data-sharing initiatives, such as the Alliance Persistent Surveillance from Space, will have a multiplier effect on NATO's data exploitation capability and multi-domain operations.
The new initiative is timely. Strategic competitors are accelerating data exploitation in the military and civilian domains, notably for the development of AI-enabled capabilities. The availability of AI-ready, quality data is a prerequisite for NATO to maintain its technological edge and military effectiveness.
