Vanguard Magazine

We resource our ambitions through clear and unequivocal strategic direction and leadership and the upfront investment in our Technical and Security Backbone upon which our Digital ambitions will build. www.vanguardcanada.com AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2021 21 INTERVIEW Intuitional Digitalization will leverage the Defence Resource Business Modern- ization Program (DRBM) to drive trans- formational change to the institutional aspect of our business. For Operational Digitalization, we will aggregate and align a number of existing projects and initia- tives into the Pan Domain Command and Control Program that will align and integrate our efforts to enhance our op- erational capability and capacity, to remain a relevant and reliable partner to our allies and ahead of our adversaries. Q Looking forward, what are two main things you think the CAF and DND need to implement now, to ensure Canada has the capabilities to succeed digitally? RAdm JZ: Before identifying specific ac- tions, we can take now, I would like to restate the problem as we see it. Digital is central to enabling and empowering people and organizations to perform. No large, complex, interconnected or- ganization can succeed without keeping pace with the digital age. As outlined in Canada's defence Policy, Strong Secure and Engaged initiative number 68, we must "Integrate existing and future assets into a networked joint system-of-systems that will enable the flow of information among multiple, interconnected platforms and operational headquarters". This is the imperative to evolve, or we will be unable to deliver effective and efficient military operations in support of GoC objectives. We must address some critical challenges in this space: we live in a digital world, but DND and CAF are predominantly ana- logue; our data is hard to access and in- tegrate, and trapped in silos; our Technol- ogy and Security Backbone is fragmented, highly customized, increasingly fragile, and not easily scalable; and we have not in- vested enough in our Digital Foundation. This is a useful statement of the problem because it helps us to frame our ambition, which is to be a Digitally Transformed DND and CAF by 2030 that will be rel- evant, resilient, interoperable, integrated, and efficient. With a mature, common, and accessible data fabric and a stable, re- silient, and adaptive Technology and Secu- rity Backbone, we will be able to create a Digital Foundation for the application lay- er that will revolutionize the way we pro- cess, analyze, present, and deliver the in- sights garnered from data to better inform decision-makers, delivering a sustainable operational and institutional advantage. Moreover, these digital capabilities will be secure, integrated, accessible, intuitive, and delivered at the speed of operations. So, what are two things that we can im- plement now to move from the statement of the problem to the achievement of the vision? The obvious answer from a techni- cal perspective would be to focus on ac- celerating the adoption of a cloud-enabled technical backbone. From a transformation theory point of view, it would be to invest in our ability to do change management at scale. Equally, there is a point of view that highlights that this is a cultural challenge rather than a technical one and we must focus on our people. Lessons learned from other large-scale technology-based trans- formation efforts in Canada and elsewhere suggest that it is about defining the scope of our ambition and program, and getting governance right. All of these points of view are valid, and indeed all of them must be addressed if we are to succeed. The two most press- ing needs are: enabling horizontality; and matching the allocation of resources to our level of ambition. We enable horizontality by creating constructs and processes that seek to align and integrate existing efforts across DND and CAF, without stifling the multiple areas of excellence that are vis- ible across the enterprise. We resource our ambitions through clear and unequivocal strategic direction and leadership and the upfront investment in our Technical and Security Backbone upon which our Digital ambitions will build. CC: That is a pretty exhaustive and detailed response from RAdm Zwick, and I agree with his view of both the problem and our ambition. It is also true that this Digital Journey will demand enterprise-wide trans- formation that will touch on every facet of both our institutional and operational as- pects of our business, every part of DND and CAF, and all members of the Defence Team – to include our industry partners. That transformation will have two key fac- ets to it: cultural and technological. The cultural challenge can be met through finely tuned, well understood and communicated, and fully resourced direc- tion from the strategic level, and through strong leadership engagement at all levels. That means we have to establish structures that enable the alignment and integration of all the various digital initiatives across the DND and CAF, and that can deliber- ately manage key functions such as ben- efits management, change management, talent management, communications, and procurement. From the technical perspective, we must design, build and deliver a technical and security backbone that is stable, resilient, and adaptive. Moreover, we must acceler- ate the delivery of some critical enablers, such as cloud at scale, and Identity, Cre- dential, and Access Management (ICAM) systems. What I can say is that I am thrilled to be involved in this endeavor. This is a complex challenge. But the reward lies with our col- lective mission of defending Canada. I am so proud to be part of this!

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