A White Paper produced by Australia’s Department of Defence has identified a need for $A5 billion in additional funding over previous plans to meet Defence’s information and communications technology needs across the next decade.

It notes that “Underinvestment in information and communications technology over the last decade, coupled with the lack of a coherent enterprise-level strategy for Defence’s complex and rapidly evolving information and communications requirements, has led to serious degradation across the information and communications capabilities of Defence.

“Key capabilities need urgent remediation, in particular to address the shortcomings of out-dated, and in some cases obsolete, systems that inhibit the conduct of day-to-day business within Defence, with overseas allies and partners, and with industry and the community more broadly.”

“The Government will make a significant new investment in information management capabilities to ensure that the right information is available to Defence decision makers, at the right time. These investments will ensure that our armed forces are able to respond quickly to emerging threats, as well as ensuring Defence’s business processes become more effective and efficient.”

Some of the areas identified for remediation by 2026 include Enterprise Information Management ($A400m–$500m), Enterprise Resource Planning System/Service ($A1-2B) and deployment of a single unified desktop operating environment ($A500m–$750m).

Defence has indicated it will work with the newly established Digital Transformation Office to ensure that its information and communications technology architecture reflect best practice.

The scale of the challenge is immense, with Defence currently supporting more than 100,000 workstations at over 200 processing locations across Australia and overseas. There are around 800 networks and more than 3 000 applications that need to be streamlined substantially to more manageable levels.

The White paper notes “There has been underinvestment in key enablers over the decade, including in the area of information and communications technology. This underinvestment has been compounded by Defence’s struggle to establish a coherent enterprise-level strategy for its complex and rapidly evolving information and communications technology domain.

It lists three main priorities.

1. establishing an Enterprise Information Management Program to enhance decision-making through access to a unified information environment;
2. standardising business processes via a consolidated Defence Enterprise Resource Planning system; and
3. delivering an enterprise-wide framework for identity and access management to provide users with trusted access to applications, facilities and information and communications technology assets.

A Centralised Processing project is also consolidating and updating Defence’s computing infrastructure and re-hosting applications from around 280 data centres to 11 within Australia and 3 overseas.

http://www.defence.gov.au/whitepaper/Docs/2016-Defence-White-Paper.pdf