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Defence seeks strategic balance

11 Nov 2009

The Minister for Defence, Senator John Faulkner, has released the Defence Department’s 2009 Defence Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Strategy, aiming to balance Gershon reforms with the need to harness ICT for national security.

The strategy white paper has forecast spending of$940 million on ICT over the next four years, while shaving $1.9 billion in costs over the next decade and savings of $250 million a year after that.

It will create an ICT environment  to “support Defence war fighting and business reform objectives through to 2030”.

This environment would be on a set of common standards available through a centralised network structure with access to a mix of fixed locations and mobile deployments using wireless connectivity where appropriate.

“Deployed commanders and decision makers will have a single view of the battle space through a Common Operating Picture accessing a wide range of data from sensors and sources,” the paper said.

Senator Faulkner said the Strategy would strengthen the relationship between Defence’s strategic objectives and its ICT capabilities.

“Through enhanced strategic planning processes and transparent portfolio-based resource allocation, the ICT Strategy will improve Defence’s ability to conduct forward ICT capability planning,” Senator Faulkner said on the Defence blog.

“The Defence ICT Strategy is also consistent with the recommendations of the Gershon Review and elements of the Strategy were included in the 2009 Defence White paper.”

Also consistent with the Gershon recommendations, Senator Faulkner said the Senator Faulkner said Defence would adopt a whole-of-department approach to procurement.

“There will be a whole-of-portfolio approach to considering ICT investments and planning, increasing efficiency and streamlining processes,” Senator Faulkner senator.

Government was also seeking to improve the publicly-available information relating to the future direction of Defence ICT, he said, and added that Defence would conduct annual reviews of the new Strategy.

Learn more about online security at the CeBIT Security World Exhibition.

Learn more about public sector ICT solutions at CeBIT’s Government Technology Expo.

Learn more about enterprise and business solutions at CeBIT’s Business Process Management Expo.

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• Sir Peter Gershon
• John Faulkner
• ITsecurity
• Gershon Report
• enterprise technology
• desktop computing
• Department of Defence
• Defence ICT
• Defence
• data security

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