The Department of Defence will look to shed its legacy tech by 2027 and expand the use of generative AI across the department as part of a major new IT strategy.
Minister for Defence Personnel Matt Keogh unveiled the 2024 Defence Digital Strategy and Roadmap late last week, setting out Defence’s tech approach over the next three years.
The strategy marks a significant shift for the huge tech shop within Defence, flagging a move away from outsourcing to the large foreign multinationals and towards building in-house IT talent and adopting more “standard enterprise solutions” to reduce Defence’s technical debt.
Newly appointed Defence CIO Chris Crozier spoke about the plan at the Defence Industry Forum last week and said that the decommissioning of a range of legacy techs would be a core focus over the next three years.
“We’re eliminating outdated legacy systems and transitioning to modern, open architecture,” Crozier said.
“We are moving away from heavily customised solutions that have built significant technical debt, to adopting standard enterprise solutions, steeply reducing technical debt, and minimising our cyber-attack surface area.
“We are embracing a new enterprise-wide, single-pane-of-glass to our ICT architecture, offering a seamless, end-to-end view of our digital landscape.”
The new strategy has three core priorities: best in class Australian Public Service (APS) and Australian Defence Force (ADF) workforce, best in class global platforms, and best in class sovereign capabilities.
It outlines how Defence must “rapidly modernise enterprise ICT capabilities to deliver mission-capable digital effects to support the ADF and the broader enterprise”, and the steps that will be taken over the next three years to achieve this.
Out with the old
A key element of this will be accelerating effects to scrap legacy tech systems and replace them with a unified cloud-based environment.
From next year, Defence will commence the retirement of legacy productive platforms within Defence, with a goal of completing this by 2027.
The retirement of the identity, credential and access management platform legacy tech will kick off in 2026 and be completed the following year, as will legacy tech in operations management, platform integration and management, electronic document and records management, and infrastructure and platform management.
Coupled with the major priorities to build internal capability and sovereign technologies, Defence will be looking to improve its procurement processes under the new digital plan.
This comes after Defence secretary Greg Moriarty last year issued a moratorium on Defence staff leaving the public service or military and then returning as contractors with the Department.
Under the three-year plan, Defence will “embrace advanced, adaptable and responsive ICT with a skilled, capable and strategically managed workforce” and will be the employer of choice for skilled professionals.
“I acknowledge our traditional Defence procurement process is cumbersome, impeding our ability to keep pace with the rapid advancements in technology,” Crozier said.
“We recognise the need to adopt more agile procurement processes that allow for faster development and deployment of new capabilities.”
Defensive AI
Over the next three years, Defence will focus on artificial intelligence, hyperscalers, and productivity platforms.
In year one of the plan, the generative AI incubation will continue across digital domains in Defence, including template and content development, and business process organisation.
The following year, it will leverage AI and machine learning capabilities to “harden and mature digital platforms and services”, including in cyber security.
By 2027, Defence will look to completely integrate AI into its identity, credentials, and access management platforms.
The digital plan is part of the up to $11 billion that the federal government is planning to spend on enterprise data and ICT over the coming decade through the 2024 Integrated Investment Program.
Earlier this year the government also announced a partnership between the Australian Signals Directorate and Amazon Web Services to build a bespoke cloud environment capable of handling top secret Defence and intelligence data.
This created concerns among the local industry over how the government is defining “sovereign” technology and the contracting of a large foreign multinational tech firm over an Australian company.
