Page 56 - Australian Defence Magazine Nov 2018

FROM THE SOURCE
CHRISTINE ZEITZ
Continued from page 58
the ICT front. Our total revenue is around $400 million in Australia. Half of this relates to ICT programs, so that’s the Defence ICT support as I just explained, and also we provide ICT support to the Australian Tax Office.
The other half of our business is what I would call ISR and systems engineering which we deliver into CASG projects and wider Government organisations. For exam- ple we deliver command/control systems for Headquarters JOC under JP2030 and pro- vide support defence communication systems.
I am not able to speak about specifics ofsomeoftheworkwedoasmanyofour contracts have non-disclosure agreement for various reasons, but the majority relates more to ISR projects where hardware and software engineering is required to build complex systems. We have been involved in work on airborne platform and radar systems in the past and currently working on integrating sensor and communication equipment in the maritime arena.
ADM: How do you deal with that tran- sition in focus and the culture for pro- grams like JP2060, Land 2110 and shap- ing towards Land 3025?
ZEITZ: The CP program is an ASDEF- CON program and was bid like any Defence program. So the Leidos Australia business is used to dealing with large complex De- fence programs. We position ourselves in the market as a systems integrator. We are a systems integrator in the ICT space, we bring in the products and capabilities from other players like Dell, Netapp and Cisco as our partners.
On the Defence mission systems similarly we don’t make products, we are the systems integrator bringing in partners who have the critical products required and integrate them into our solution.
So it’s interesting you’re asking how we
move from ICT to Defence – we’re already in Defence as a systems integrator. At Leidos we’re actually saying how do we move from Defence into other federal agencies? So we’re exploring. We’ve just got our first contract with Department of Home Affairs to provide a flexible partner engagement. The section we’re working with at the moment is an im- migration systems section. We’re doing busi- ness analyst work for their new system and planning out some new projects for them.
The strategy is to get at least one more fed- eral agency as a customer. We are extremely focused. When we go to Home Affairs or Human Services, we’re saying we’re here, we know how to deal with large government agencies, large programs, large systems in- tegrations, maximise supply chains and we deliver. That’s our proposition.
ADM: At Land Forces in September you announced the contract for Land 2110 has been signed, after two years of ne- gotiation. What will that contract cover and how are you engaging with SMEs to fulfil your AIC obligations?
ZEITZ: We are always extremely focused on AIC. In terms of sustainment for Land 2110 we’re at 80 per cent Australian company in- volvement. We have developed an integrated system solution which includes materials and devices some of which are sourced over- seas but we are partnered with a number of Australian companies such as J3Seven and ECLIPS who are delivering world class prod- ucts. We’ve set up many sustainment con- tracts with SMEs to support our solution.
ADM: How would you characterise the defence ICT environment? We had a for- mer Minister who referred to Defence ICT as 'quite retro' in 2016. Do you think it has moved on since then?
ZEITZ: I think so. In my own history, 28 years now working with Defence in Aus- tralia, out of country a couple of times, it’s
been the last three years as the first time I’ve worked with CIOG. So it’s always been about DMO/CASG and my observation is that CIOG have got a really hard trek. The invest- ment in the core infrastructure has now been done, the ISR backbone investment under JP2096 is approved, and that is important.
The ongoing investment in ICT is the most important part of our defence network- centric warfare. It’s fine to have a ship or sub- marine, and the combat management system is incredibly important, but your repositories of data and how you connect them and how you get information to the war fighter to make a decision is the key. That’s our space.
Whether it’s CIOG or across core de- fence, like mission systems, platforms or HQ JOC, that ICT layer is so critically im- portant. We’re seeing enormous amount of budget expenditure going to those weapon systems, which is understandable. I’d like to see a bit more investment going into the en- abling ICT programs that underpin these programs, which the IIP did identify.
It’s a call to recognise the absolute impera- tive importance of ICT as a foundation of so many of our current and future capabilities.
ADM: Given the workforce constraints Australia is facing in terms of STEM cen- tric skills, what plans to do you have in place to address that?
ZEITZ: We are diversifying where we are located. So when I arrived we had the ma- jority of the workforce in Canberra and a smaller workforce in Melbourne. We have strategically grown our Melbourne workforce. Melbourne is a city of 5 million people, Canberra is a city of 400,000 people in terms of the raw numbers related to the respective talent pools.
When we separated from IS&GS we lost access to many of the back of house func- tions to run a company. We’ve had to set up all our own functions including legal, corporate, HR, payroll, IT helpdesk, HR
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