Defence Online

The year ahead in tech

January 20, 2017

Defence Online speaks exclusively with Andy Johnston, Head of the Defence Programme for techUK, the industry association dedicated to promoting and bringing new opportunities to the tech sector.

Representing the companies and technologies that are defining the world of tomorrow, techUK members employ some 700,000 people. The tech industry is growing exponentially within the UK, contributing ten per cent of the UKs GDP in 2015, while the digital sector provides a huge opportunity and a significant challenge to Defence.

With digital technology fundamentally changing the way the Armed Forces work, both on the frontline and in business, it is vital for the industry to work with the MOD to provide continued support. While the tech industry can help UK government better understand and procure information technologies quicker and more efficiently.

techUK’s Defence Programme has been developed with members to address the new challenges facing the sector, and make sure industry is engaged throughout the transformation process as more services and capabilities become digitised.

Andy Johnston

We asked Andy what his thoughts were on the coming year and where techUK will be focussing its efforts in 2017.

We’ve just completed our submission to the Defence Industrial Policy Refresh consultation. The consultation opened at the end of November last year and we have been working hard to put forward our views on behalf of members. It’s tough to cover all the important issues, as the consultation is quite broad, but we’ve got there.

So it’s a worthwhile thing to be doing then?

Oh yes, definitely. From our point of view there is a lot that can be done between MOD and industry, particularly the tech industry. Our members work in all sorts of sectors from healthtech to national security, and linking these industries together is really going to be vital as the defence industry moves forward – if you just look at the cyber security issues throughout all of UK industry, you can see the importance of coherence.

MOD are obviously thinking of the big ticket issues, like SME/International engagement and value for money, which are indeed vitally important. However, these don’t reflect some of the issues that are important to the digital industries, such as regional support to clusters and practical business generation considerations. We’ve made sure that some of the smaller and more practical ideas are included in our response, to represent the UK’s SMEs.

The way we approach it at techUK, is that the MOD needs to improve its working practices in order to reflect how digital companies and innovative SMEs work, in this modern world technology is everywhere and companies have a wide variety of clients they can supply too.

Is there anything else you’ve covered in the consultation?

Oh yes, alongside the large policy considerations such as ‘international by design’ and value for money our other main priorities look at practical issues, like getting the MOD to do more webcasts and webinars so that our members and SME companies in the north and wider UK don’t have to keep travelling down to London/Bristol for information and opportunities.

We’d also like to see improvements to the Defence Contracts Bulletin and Defence Contracts Online, making them more user friendly and displaying upcoming contract opportunities to help give companies an opportunity pipe-line.

There’s lots of smaller issues too, but all in all I think the consultation is a good opportunity to just lay all our cards on the table and figure out how to go forward in partnership with MOD.

Do you think they will listen to industry?

From our experience over the last few years, the dialogue and willingness to listen from the MOD has improved very much, and that is a good sign for the future. There are lots of great people at the MOD who understand the issues from the point of industry– they’ve worked for/or with SMEs or within the technology sector before but on the whole it is the processes that continue to hold back progress.

The engagement is there as is the willingness to listen to industry, but there are definitely still some traditionally slow-moving processes that are imposed upon industry that haven’t been addressed in full yet. Fundamentally change needs to be driven from the top and effectively flowed down to the teams in DE&S and the Front Line Commands who own the projects and programmes that industry supply into.

Other than the policy refresh what do you think will be the big issues/push for the techUK Defence Programme this year?

Online I have seen a few articles calling 2017 ‘the year of the Navy’ – I think this is an interesting notion so techUK is going to pursue more engagement with the Navy, as well as with other frontline commands.

I would like to run a couple of sessions with Navy Capability and discuss the synergies between ship building and the digital industries – in Sir John Parker’s report on the upcoming ship build strategy – he puts forward ideas about regional innovation centres and clusters and the use of digital design technologies in shipbuilding and the opportunities that this presents to industry. I think that this is a really good opportunity to make some synergies between what is a very traditional British industry capability (cutting metal, port/ship building/shipyards ) and exciting new companies within the digital sector that you would never see as a traditional supplier to defence. I think this is a good opportunity for techUK to engage with the maritime defence industry and get our companies in front of them.

And I believe cyber security is going to be at the forefront of anything tech this year?

That’s right, the Defence Cyber Protection Partnership goes live on April 1^st, and this will have a big impact across the defence industry as it is incorporated into contracts properly. At the minute, as long as you are working towards Cyber Essentials plus, you can be considered for a contract. But when the Public Beta goes live, companies will be required to be working towards DCPP or already have DCPP controls in place. It’s going to have a large effect on industry and it is important that techUK helps communicate messages both to and from industry and MOD.

Another major area techUK will be focussing on is opportunities for exports within our sector; not just cyber security specifically, but everything that our sector encompasses, from training and simulation software, to digital data analytics to support logistics and other military tasks.

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Post written by: Vicky Maggiani

Vicky has worked in media for over 20 years and has a wealth of experience in editing and creating copy for a variety of sectors.