RCN Digital Leadership: Aaron O'Connor, Lieutenant-Commander

September 1^st, 2023 – Defence Stories

Born and raised in the Halifax area, Aaron O’Connor is a Senior Staff Officer of the Naval Reserves at PCC Atlantic. He joined the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) as a Reserve Entry Officer in 2008 while studying Informatics (Bachelors of Computer Science) at Dalhousie University. He is a CISCO-certified Network Administrator and is now pursuing a bachelors degree in Public Policy and Gender Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University.

Prior to working full-time for the RCN on a Class B contract, Aaron was employed by a subsidiary of Rogers doing real-time adherence management for call centres, creating schedules for 500+ people across Canada. No doubt his professional and academic experiences prepared him for his current role. He is responsible for all non-operational tasks at PCC Atlantic and has between 42 to 200 personnel reporting to him depending on the time of year.

He started building his own computers at a very young age which led to a broad understanding of all things computers. He is also committed to staying in contact with friends who have pursued advanced computer science degrees in order to remain abreast of technology trends and innovations. He is currently interested in data manipulation and data management, how to accurately use data, and how to identify and develop relevant tools and solutions.

With regards to his military responsibilities, he is an advocate of maintaining the accuracy and freshness of Monitor Mass data as this enterprise-level tool is of critical importance for effective and efficient decision making. Time invested in Monitor Mass data will result in better support for our personnel from the PCCs plus better time management for our ships.

Aaron’s recommendations for improving your digital skills include the following:

• Use the most advanced tools available.
• Clean your data so that it can be interpreted in a useful form.
• Present your data with a narrative to contextualize the results.
• Understand that Excel is not a briefing product; it is a tool to help you understand what you are going to brief. It’s not an answer to an Analytics question. PowerBI should be used instead.
• Reach out to your Analytics cell to confirm whether a query has been done before.
• Be willing to do your own research in order to properly solve the questions posed.