Waves of Change

The Coast Guard's Digital Transformation: A New Era of Automation and Empowerment

In a bid to modernize its operations, the United States Coast Guard has launched a digital transformation strategy that prioritizes automation, harnesses data, and empowers its workforce with new tools. At the heart of this initiative is a focus on streamlining repetitive tasks, delivering near-real-time data across operations, and reducing manual workloads.

The strategy, released in May, marks a departure from past modernization efforts, which tended to focus on infrastructure or individual components. Instead, the Coast Guard has adopted a more holistic approach, seeking to understand the fundamental principles of digital transformation and how it can best enable its workforce to succeed.

At the center of this effort is Brian Campo, director of technology readiness and chief data and AI officer at the Coast Guard. Speaking at Federal News Network's Cloud Exchange 2026, Campo emphasized the need for a more intentional approach to digital transformation, one that prioritizes human-centered design and empowering the workforce.

"We're trying to think differently about the way we field these big systems," Campo said. "Instead of huge monoliths, thinking about them as distributed services. How can we get after pieces, parts of them individually? What can we do today to improve the life of a coastie as immediately as possible?"

A key component of this strategy is Coastal Sentinel, a next-generation maritime surveillance, command and control, and communications system designed to fuse data from across sensors and apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to monitor maritime activity.

The ultimate goal, Campo explained, is to accelerate how the Coast Guard gets from "data to information to decisions." This requires not only the development of advanced analytics and AI models but also a robust infrastructure for sharing data at speed and scale.

To achieve this, the Coast Guard has established a Decision Advantage organization focused on leveraging its data. The service has also created a software yard to develop new capabilities, providing employees with low-code platforms and other tools.

One area where automation is already having a significant impact is in maintenance tasks. By digitizing paper forms and manuals, the Coast Guard is reducing manual workloads and improving efficiency.

"Those are absolute areas where if we can give them the right information, do it in a digital format, where they can take a tablet with them, that tablet can be showing them the maintenance as they're starting to do it," Campo said. "They can punch in what they're doing as they're doing it. They can get more information if something's not going the way they need it, or if they're looking for schematics that they didn't even think they were going to need."

As the Coast Guard continues to evolve its digital transformation strategy, it is also incorporating a digital-first mentality through its Technology Readiness Directorate. This includes initiatives such as the Technology Readiness Transformation Office and the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Office.

"What we're trying to do is think about what does it mean for them to start in the digital age?" Campo said. "Not be burdened by some of the legacy things that other acquisition organizations do, not be burdened by policies and regulations that weren't really built for the 21st century."

In addition to these efforts, the Coast Guard is also establishing a Futures Development and Integration directorate to chart the future of the service and spearhead Force Design 2028. This initiative will enable the service to better understand how unmanned vehicles, new sensors, and other emerging technologies will shape its operations in the decades to come.

The ultimate goal of this digital transformation strategy is not just to modernize the Coast Guard's operations but also to empower its workforce to succeed in an increasingly complex and dynamic environment.

As Campo emphasized, "Those sorts of things are where we're thinking about these digital models, then turning it into something where we can really be more intentional about the operations of the Coast Guard, but still putting the workforce front and center, making sure that they are the ones that are driving these missions.