Be they from state or non-state actors, today’s threats are increasingly influenced by technology as a leveller, along with factors such as vulnerabilities in supply chains, unpredictable energy supplies, climate change, water scarcity. The list goes on.
Amidst this backdrop, there is clearly still a job to be done to protect the homeland from afar and from within our shores. Our security is not guaranteed and we need to invest time and resource into all levers of power in order to assure a stable future where we can co-exist with those who do not share our liberal values.
The challenge is working out how to get there. How can we navigate the choppy waters ahead of us and reach the sunny uplands where the UK is secure, stable and prosperous?
The vision
In the current mode of operation, Government has the indicators and warnings that guide how the UK operates and engages on the world stage, while industry has the reach into the manufacturing and technology base. But the two are not always connected as well as they could be, and the UK is not big enough to always be in the driving seat of technology. As such, we must be smart about how we securely utilise people, process and information to make the effect greater than the sum of its parts.
This points to a need for Government – specifically the Ministry of Defence (MOD) – and industry to work more closely together; to collaborate to address the challenges of the day and make our defence and security capabilities stronger in a way that unifies and benefits us all.
This is not a new idea. This message of collaboration was extremely prevalent at DSEI 2023 in London, with many senior defence figures referencing the importance of building more effective partnerships across the five key domains of land, sea, air, space and cyber. The fact that it remains a central theme at our premiere defence and security event shows that we as an ecosystem haven’t yet cracked it.
So, what do we need to do differently? I believe our most effective course of action should be based on the pillars of the UK Government’s Digital Strategy for Defence, originally published in 2021. The Digital Strategy introduced the Digital Backbone of People, Process, Data, Technology and Cyber, and it is on the first three of these that I will focus here.
A course of action
Let’s start with People. We all need to be flexible in the way we employ our people, and introduce porous boundaries between industry, regular military, reservists, the civil service and academia. This must be done in a way that grows and fosters our STEM talent for the benefit of the UK and supports our prosperity and levelling-up agendas; in a way that fuels ambition and rewards talent.
Industry is right behind this, and we know that MOD is equally supportive. At DSEI earlier this year, one General spoke about the fluid nature of the future workforce and the need for organisations to adapt to this rather than expect the workforce to adapt to industry. So the case for doing things differently with People is clear.
Then there’s Process, with a key challenge being how we work across Government. One solution is to stop relying on bespoke solutions that meet a particular need but offer no path to scale, adapt or export. Instead, there should be greater focus on adopting open architectures that allow products and services to evolve, and implementing intuitive user interfaces that wherever possible mirror the tools we use in our personal lives. This would help to reduce the training burden, enabling people to move through their careers without having to learn new ways of working every time they start a new job – thereby supporting the People agenda.
Process also includes how we engage with small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups, to harness their innovation and make traditional defence primes more approachable. For example, simple and standardised commercial arrangements between primes and SMEs, supplemented by secure infrastructure and processes that support closer prime and Government collaboration, would make it easier for primes and Government to rapidly filter classified challenges and then bring SME innovation to bear. As with People, the case for doing things differently with Process is also clear.
Finishing with Data, we know that data is currently fixed in internal silos and difficult to access and integrate across defence. This is as true for industry as it is for MOD – the Digital Strategy for Defence tells us so, and the Data Strategy for Defence tells us we need to work harder to curate our data and confirm it is assured, discoverable and interoperable.
Data is the new strategic asset, and unleashing its power can generate the game-changing insights that would give the UK a competitive advantage. To paraphrase the same General as previously mentioned, the need to establish a data-centric approach that enables smarter decision-making based on thousands of data twin simulations using live data is key. This is what will enable the execution of evidence-based decisions.
Implementing cultural change
In BAE Systems Digital Intelligence, we know that the thoughtful engineering of People, Process and Data can help meet new requirements and deliver those until-now unreachable insights faster.
Where industry is able to share its People using commercial and contractual approaches, built to incentivise and encourage genuine collaboration; where modern, agile software development Processes allow continuous integration of new requirements at the point of need; and where Data is shared securely across organisational boundaries. When these three things are true, UK Government will well and truly be ahead of the game.
Of course, this requires a cultural transformation as much as a technological one, such as by adopting new ways of working that are genuinely collaborative and establishing everyone as part of one team. This is essential when operating at high security, since it means that team members at the sharp end of requirements are fully equipped to work out what can be done and how to do it quickly. It is agile and immediate, empowering teams to deliver advantage faster.
As one of the UK’s largest defence primes, we have a vision and a course of action that requires us to invest in our people, processes and data. We have seen how adapting our ways of working can get better results more quickly and we must remember that we are all in this together. As a Government and industry community, we understand the ways and means and must therefore work ever harder together to make sure we deliver on our vison.