Vanguard Magazine

20 APRIL/MAY 2023 www.vanguardcanada.com I N T E RV I E W flowing through that organization. And let me say that, to define the DDACSI's roles and expectations, we leaned into our relationships with industry and sought guidance from actual experts who had either done it or assisted people who had done digital transformation. Q Industry is very eager to support the new initiative. How do you see industry participating in this transformation? This question has been discussed a lot because almost none of the core compe- tencies required to tackle this project are in uniform. We need industry to help us, but as you can imagine, going outside the ranks for guidance is not something we've done much of in the past. But we have to lean into doing things differently if we're going to succeed. Right away, I would say we would lean heavily on industry to help build up and manage the DDACSI. We're very excited about this because we're out there finding new industry part- ners with fresh ideas. The goal is to identify the partners that make the most sense for us throughout the process, then hopefully scale up and apply to the bigger procure- ment projects we have. And so that's how I Colonel Dan McKinney led the team effort for the development of the Canadian Army Digital Strategy and was also assigned as the first Director Digital and Army Combat Systems Integration (DDACSI). Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) family of projects as an example, who do they talk to? Do they talk to Directorate of Land Require- ments (DLR)? Do they talk to DDACSI? These decisions are on our roadmap; and at some point, all of this will probably be handed over to DDACSI. We're not changing anything specifically right now, but leadership is mapping out capabilities DDACSI needs to do its job and be the hub. As that evolves into reality, and as we build enough capacity to take on ma- jor initiatives, projects are going to start see initially that we want to evolve this: find proof of concept and ways to experiment that will assist us in setting up new ways of doing business and acquiring the more tech- nologically advanced pieces of equipment we need for operations in the land domain so that we're staying ahead of the power curve versus always trying to catch up. Then, in terms of tackling the task itself, we see ourselves working with industry to see what's even possible. Right now, we have a few programs on the go with in- dustry partners who are showing us what they're capable of. And I think we're also showing them what we're capable of, that we're willing to do things differently, for example in how we plan to run the Land C4ISR family of projects (Strong, Secure, Engaged, item 42), a program estimated at 6 billions dol- lars. A lot of that is for industry to help us get it done. It's a huge opportunity for everybody. Q Now I'm curious with the war in Ukraine going on, have there been any lessons learned/observed in terms of how quickly they've been able to adapt in their capability fielding that perhaps is of interest to the Canadian Army? Exercise WESTERN SABRE, 25 August 2021. Photo: Private Daniel Pereira, 39 CBG Public Affairs, Canadian Armed Forces photo

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