DEFENCE Information Domain: Workforce models for the information age During NZDIA’s IDEAS2020 Part One, Defence told industry its input was needed to deliver the Information Domain – and designing new Defence operating and business models fit for the information age. As an exercise in early engagement, last year’s IDEAS 2020 Part One was roundly lauded for providing industry with an opportunity to be involved from the starting blocks in discussions around a range of new Information Domain capability areas. The initiative was itself an acknowledgement of the centrality of industry to the mission of standing up the new information domain. By the end of the event, Ministry of Defence and NZDF Information Domain Directors had left industry with the challenge of answering key questions around the future Defence Operating Model: What types of operating models, relationship models and workforce models are needed to support the new domain? Industry’s responses to these questions are detailed in the NZDIA’s soon-to-be-released consolidated IDEAS 2020 Insights Package, and in the presentations and transcripts available in the members-only area of the NZDIA website. In this article, we feature an excerpt from the Insights Package that explores how in IDEAS 2020 Part Two industry and academia responded to the call to provide its ideas around future Defence workforce models. Future workforce models According to former MOD Information Domain Director Nick Gillard, because Defence is looking at new ways of doing business, it is focussed on good workforce 24
modelling, and it believes that industry has a role to play in helping the organisation to achieve this. “From a workforce perspective, it’s a competitive market out there – we are just but one organisation across government and across the private and public sectors, who are looking for these skillsets and these people,” he said during IDEAS 2020 Part One. “Will the ‘cyber-warrior’ look different? Are they deployable? Are they New Zealand based? Are they uniformed? Are they civilian? All these kinds of questions are up for discussion.” He called on industry to help Defence to articulate its point of difference within the skills and labour market, to help in terms of organisational design and the policies and processes that will enable the NZDF to recruit, retain, and remunerate for the information future. Digital and Data literacy In his presentation, Constantine Macris, instructor of cyber systems of the United States Coast Guard Academy, cites leading US cryptographer Bruce Schneier’s 2013 warning that the world was moving towards an age of ‘digital feudalism’. “We don’t have this intimate relationship with the technology that we use every day, Macris explains, “and because of that, it’s become unattainable.” This increasingly compels us to align ourselves with digital feudal lords who “take something in exchange for providing
you protection in a dangerous and complicated digital world.” Alex Matthews from Xequals believes that digital literacy is no longer optional. He echoes Macris’ sentiments in relation to the severing of humans’ relationship with technology. “The divide in technical knowledge, in leadership, and in management is becoming more and more accentuated and stressed as the world relies more and more on digital systems.” According to Jordan Morrow, Global Head of Data Literacy for Qlik, despite 92 percent of business decision makers saying that it’s important for employees to be data literate, only 17 percent are encouraging or strongly encouraging change. Qlik’s study found that only one in four decision makers are confident in their data literacy skill set, and one in three C-level leaders are confident. At entry level it’s about one in five. “If we are lacking those data literacy skills as an organisation how can we confidently say to ourselves we are data-driven?” Morrow asks. “How can we even evolve our culture to be data-driven if the workforce is not comfortable using data?” From the cybersecurity perspective, Checkpoint Software Technologies’ Ashwin Ram makes the point that basic awareness training constitutes a security control that addresses a major vulnerability – an organisation’s own people. Given that the majority of malware is delivered via email, it’s imperative that “your security Line of Defence
