Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/476674
C C4iSR www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015 21 mon standards in key areas such as information sharing, data management, etc? The short answer is "yes," but with a big "however." The cus- tomer is certainly acknowledging this need for common stan- dards in many areas, however the key challenge is whose respon- sibility is it to address them, implement them or, well, pay for them? Acknowledging the need for commonality and having the ability to address those needs perhaps due to time or budget constraints is not always feasible. Q Given the volume of data these systems generate, what are the demands for information management? Management and protection of information is a key recurring theme, no matter where we go. It is an area many of our cus- tomers are concerned about. Key phrases such as big data are discussed in all circles now: How do you analyze it? How do you fuse it? How do you exploit it? How do you protect it in the cloud? Where's the cloud environment going? So the ability to have full insight and feel secure about their information is criti- cal. For the Canadian Armed Forces, management and securing their information is key. In terms of demands for information management, I would say it comes down to security and acces- sibility: secure it fi rst and then make sure it is available to those who need it. Q Are the standards Thales has developed for a sector like banking or air traffi c control readily transferable to others? Some are. A lot is linked to security aspects, so many can't be transferred because of security constraints. But with some of the open standards or acknowledged industry standards, we will work to simplify interoperability and use it across borders. Some standards are specifi c to North America and not applicable in Europe, so we will develop to a different standard. Before you design your product, you have to understand in which markets you want to offer the capability. Q At the 2014 Outlook, the air force noted a requirement for better tools for data analysis, data fusion, information man- agement, and ways to help improve decision making. Within the command and control construct, in particular, how do you improve that? The best way to improve that is to have a strong understanding of the customer need and vision, rather than the specifi cation as written. There is a balance we try to aim for between providing the tools they need, not restricting their usage for individuals who will use them, and making it simple to collate that. Com- manders can get the "extract" of the tools to make proper de- cisions. In essence, you don't want to drive your customers to use your tools in a forced fashion, you want to provide them fl exibility to tailor their applications to their own individual use while still maintaining data integrity, data fl ow and security. The way Thales works at improving this cycle is to spend a considerable amount of time understanding the concept of operation for the capability being implemented and working very closely with the customer to design the "interface" between the tools and the user to ensure ease of use. If the tool has all the right information and is easy to use, we feel it has improved the capability of the customer. Q To your point about understanding the customer, what's the focus of the conversations you are having with a mature customer like Canada? What you really want to understand is their vision. What are their constraints and what are their timelines for implementation? Where are they at now? How do they see the evolution? Where do they see their big challenges? And what capability do they feel they need from industry? The CAF has their own internal capability to do things, but they can't do it all, so what is the portion that they feel they need support from industry? When you have these conversations, you want to understand how they plan on cornering that, and then position yourself ac- cordingly. We don't want insider knowledge, we want to under- stand the vision. I think that is probably one of the more common challenges for industry with the military: we just don't understand clearly where you are trying to go. You don't enunciate and you treat industry like bad guys who just want money. Yes, we do have shareholders, but industry wants to fulfi ll a need, to bring value- added, and we are trying to understand your challenges, your problems and how we can help you fi x them. We want to help you deliver a capability. Q Is Canada improving in this area or is this still an issue of contention? I think there are still some challenges in the openness of commu- nication with industry. We are seeing some initiatives to improve I n 2012, Thales turned its R&D facility at the Parc du Technologique in Quebec City into one of fi ve global Thales Research & Technol- ogy centres — the fi rst such centre in North America. The laboratories in France, the Netherlands, Singapore, the U.K. and Canada have a mandate to push technological innovation and identify new and critical technologies for the organization. Focused on research for cyber security, information fusion, cogni- tive science, mobile platforms and command and control applications, the Quebec centre has started to attract a cluster of small area busi- nesses, academia and defence scientists that Thales Canada hopes to leverage as the Defence Procurement Strategy and its emphasis on Industrial Technological Benefi ts and Value Propositions rolls out. "Many companies and researchers bring a niche capability that we may not have," said Alain Gauthier, VP of Secure Communications and Information Systems. "It helps us get better partnerships."