Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2021 37 evenT becoming a digital organization and not necessarily its attributes. The barriers to adoption discussed included: • Culture – inside and external to the or- ganizations. • Trust – inside and external to military, government, and industry. • Policies – it isn't sufficient to say that we are going to change our processes and procedures unless you amend the poli- cies that direct those processes and pro- cedures, many of which unfortunately defence does not own. • Security – industry speaks one language about security standards and defence speaks another, not particularly helpful. Some of the opportunities that were discussed included: • Partnerships – Defence, Academia, Gov- ernment, and Industry, including broad- er partnerships across industry. • Communication – unfortunately, al- though we speak a common language, we often speak past one another, and events such as this conference need to be continued to be leveraged to ensure we are collectively on the same page. • Exciting opportunities/Investments on the Horizon – provide the vehicles to enable the delivery mechanism of the Defence Team's priorities. There were many exceptional takeaways provided by the speakers, moderators, and panelists. During one presentation, it was identified that there are six trends in the technology industry (understood to be those providing digital services to consum- ers) that are trending in the opposite di- rection of the cyber industry (understood to be those providing digital services to protect and secure digital infrastructure). It was also recognized by a participant that perhaps a better framework needs to be developed for capabilities as opposed to the CAF PRICIE model (Personnel, Research and Development, IT, Concepts and Doctrine, Infrastructure and Equip- ment). The question was asked, are there better digital readiness frameworks or models that need to be adopted or em- ployed. Some key one-line sentiments that were particularly noteworthy: • We need decision dominance on our Business Systems. • We will only operate at the Speed of Trust. • We need to innovate every day. • Organizations are spending large sums of money to reduce the risk of operating their legacy systems when the real risk is continuing to operate them. The conference was very optimistic on the advantages that will be achievable as a re- sult of Defence embarking on this digital journey and the opportunities that will ac- crue to ensure that young Canadian sail- ors, soldiers, aviators, and special forces operators have the capabilities required to succeed in the battlespace alongside our partners and allies today and into the future. Having said that, there was a very real appreciation of the challenges that need to be overcome to enable that success. It was abundantly clear that the senior leadership of Defence is commit- ted to becoming digital. It is also evident that the young personnel locking up their smartphones as they go to work only to use dumb phones are even more keen to be enabled digitally. Closing that gap will be leadership's biggest challenge. VAdm Ron Lloyd (Ret'd) was the Master of Ceremonies for C4ISR and Beyond 2021. A native of Taber, Alberta, Vice-Admiral Ron Lloyd (Ret'd) was the 35th Com- mander of the Royal Canadian Navy from 2016-2019. During this time, he was also "double hatted" as the acting Vice Chief of the Defence Staff for almost half a year and as the first Chief Data Officer for the Department of National Defence and Cana- dian Armed Forces for a full year. During his 38-year career in the RCN, he had the privileged to command HMCS Charlotte- town, HMCS Algonquin, the PACIFIC Fleet, and the ATLANTIC fleet. He has extensive operational experience having deployed on numerous occasions globally. He also served at National Defence Headquarters as the Deputy Commander of the RCN, the Chief of Force Develop- ment for the Canadian Armed Forces, the Director General of Force Development for the RCN, and Executive Assistant to the Commander of the RCN. He is currently a strategic advisor for Accenture Health and Public Service. Figure 1 TeCh Simpler to understand and easier to use More convenient Fewer people required to operate Increasingly interconnected systems Increasingly automated, leveraging advanced analytics Proactively solve problems CybeR More complex and less easy to understand Less convenient More people required and the gap widening Isolated systems Manual, human processes Problems identified after implementation and then rectified

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