Page 36 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2022

36 DEFENCE BUSINESS MILCIS 2021
MAY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
ICT AS A CORE CAPABILITY – MILCIS 2021
Where Defence’s diverse information and communications technology was once viewed as a corporate enabler, it’s set to transform into a core capability, generating warfighting effects for the ADF.
ADM STAFF WRITERS | CANBERRA
DEFENCE Chief Technology Officer Justin Keefe said the ADF is moving more and more quickly to a convergence of people, sensors and platforms.
“This will change fundamentally concepts such as com- mand and control, decision making and indeed the infor- mation we rely on for those decisions,” he told the MilCIS (Military Communications and Information Systems) 2021 conference in Canberra in February.
Defence will release an updated Information and Com- munications Technology (ICT) Strategy in second quarter, which is set to alter some longstanding assumptions.
“What I am seeking from this revised strategy is to ac- knowledge the fundamental shift of ICT from what I would contend we viewed in the past as a corporate enabler to a
core capability that generates warfighting effects for the ADF,” Keefe told the conference.
ACTION PLAN
He said previous ICT strategies focused on the Chief Infor- mation Officer Group (CIOG) as a backroom enabler, with commensurate resources and funding.
“We need to pivot. Our reference strategy will be accom- panied by an action plan that will prioritise our effort on transforming the secret environment, improving connections
ABOVE: Delayed by COVID–19, MilCIS 2021 was held in Canberra on 22–24 February
CONSEC