11 minute read
The Importance of Collaboration
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ACT INNOVATION HUB THE IMPORTANCE OF COLLABORATION
The founder of ACT’s Innovation Hub, Serge Da Deppo, explains how his organization is helping NATO become more adaptable and able to respond faster to events by collaborating on an open community basis
Q
Can you describe the structure and mission of ACT’s NATO Innovation Hub? Q
What sort of collaborative formats does the Innovation Hub have?
A ACT’s NATO Innovation Hub (IH) includes a laboratory in which we test and validate innovation best practice so that innovative solutions to the Alliance’s most intractable pain points can be distributed throughout the NATO community. Our overarching mission is to make NATO adaptable and agile so that it can respond quickly to challenges, whatever form they may take, now and in the future. We do this by developing all the assets we think are necessary to achieve this mission. Primarily, this requires the creation of an innovation mindset and all the processes and techniques that stem from that mindset.
As far as structure is concerned, we are a very large open community of thousands of innovators supervised and supported by about 50 in-house staff from NATO Allied Command Transformation based in Norfolk, Virginia in the United States. Although we rely predominantly on external experts for our technology skills, we do have an in-house software development capability of about 30 people. These software developers work alongside an external community of technology experts and innovators from industry and academia as well as individuals and other organizations. As an open community, we welcome individuals, organizations and universities from all NATO Member States – working either on-site or remotely.
A We have both formal and informal collaborative formats. For example, we have thousands of individuals who contribute to our projects on their own. These people don’t need to be from any particular organization. They just need to be able to bring their problems or solutions to us.
On a more formal level, we have partnerships with organizations that we have aggregated into two main groupings: the Academic Alliance and the NATO Innovation Network. The Academic Alliance comprises in excess of 30 universities that contribute more than just individuals to the IH. These academic institutions can have a very structured collaborative arrangement with the IH, and might even be supporting the running of certain projects as well as suggesting and developing solutions.
The NATO Innovation Network, on the other hand, is made up of entities from around NATO that are similar to the IH. At the moment we have 18 of them from 10 nations. These sorts of organizations are very easy to collaborate with as we have a unity of principles and vision for what innovation should be within the defence community.
When it comes to our collaboration with the NATO Command Structure, we have a very close relationship
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IH solution development team members at the Norfolk, Virginia, facility (PHOTO: NATO)
with Allied Command Operations. They are our main customer, and they provide us with the majority of the issues and pain points that need a solution. We are in almost daily contact with them.
Q Why are these types of collaborative relationships so important when it comes to technology development?
A Partnerships are useful for everything on all levels, but it is not just about technology. In fact, in the current mindset, technology is not really the cornerstone. People are the key to innovation. That is why we focus on collaboration and people. Of course, the technology is important, and it will likely form part of any solution. That is why we use a multi-disciplinary approach to all our projects. However, the IH is like any other organization in, for example, the military, government and industry. We do not have the resources or the inclination to retain technology specialists from every technological discipline. Above all, that is why the collaboration is so important. It enables us to bring the necessary expertise to each project on a case-by-case basis.
Q
What sort of innovation techniques does the Innovation Hub rely on?
A There are so many ways to be innovative, and we do not profess to be aware of all of them nor engaged or focused on everything. But what we do is focus on two main complementary ways of innovating: Open Innovation and Agile Development. Open Innovation is a way to share a problem and develop a solution with as many people as possible. Agile Development means being user-focused by integrating the end user into the development team. By getting rid of the ‘middleman’ it is possible to eliminate confusion and unnecessary delay.
There are two projects that exemplify these techniques – our Critical Thinking course, which was developed based primarily on the Open Innovation model, and our cyber situational awareness tool CYSAT, which leaned
A Disruptive Technology Experiment (DTEX) is run at the IH and online with the support of Dr Girish (MIT Center for Collective Intelligence) (PHOTO: NATO)
more heavily on Agile Development. Our collaboration with the NCI Agency was a key part of the Agile Development process on CYSAT. All NATO software tools are scaled up by the NCI Agency on their servers. Since we recognized that CYSAT would have to transition to the NCI Agency in order for it to be eventually delivered to the end user, we integrated NCI Agency staff on the development team right at the beginning of the project. In fact, we do that with all our software projects. This makes the NCI Agency a key internal partner for us – one where collaboration is not only important, it is vital.
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
Closing the IT skills gap
Sustaining NATO’s technological advantage by identifying and utilizing the right IT professionals
Aleksandra Kotevska Dimovski
General Manager, Brevco Services
Why is IT recruitment and retention such an important topic for NATO?
Today, NATO and other military organizations place a lot of emphasis on critical technological challenges and how to overcome them, however, in many instances, one key aspect is overlooked – how to identify and retain highly skilled IT security professionals.
Every technology initiative can have a direct impact on operational success, when the appropriate IT professionals are engaged to inspire, implement, and deliver. Without having the right people with the right skill sets, a technology initiative is destined to fail. The problem gets even bigger when there is a clear gap in the skillsets required to tackle emerging technology initiatives.
What approaches can NATO adopt to mitigate this IT skills gap?
In many ways, the skills gap can be mitigated by understanding that the commercial sector has overtaken the defence community in terms of IT and IT security technological progress and development. As a consequence, IT subject matter experts (SMEs) tend to be highly specialized. Not only that, many of the skills that they specialize in are relatively new.
Unfortunately, many recruiting organizations still receive requests for at least 10 years’ experience as a condition of engagement. However, this is no longer appropriate, in the same way that University degrees do not necessarily achieve success, but skills do. Moreover, many of the skill sets organizations are looking for, have only existed for a couple of years. Instead of focusing on years of experience, organizations should turn to adopting skill-based recruitment. A much wider skills base is needed instead of having IT professionals responsible for multiple technologies. Specialization is key. By taking this approach, military organizations could replace older technologies with more advanced systems. In turn, this would enable IT professionals to enhance their skills and improve their career prospects while working in these organizations.
How can an organization like NATO address these new IT market conditions?
One of the considerations, is adaptation to market fluctuations. It is not about cutting back an organization’s technology needs, instead, it is about accepting that SMEs have specialized skills. NATO needs to understand the broader market skills availability, as well as be prepared to create more (even short-term) contracting opportunities, that can address their technological undertaking appropriately.
In addition, one of the limitations for EU NATO bases, is that they might be missing out on a potentially huge pool of highly qualified IT professionals from countries within the Alliance that are not in the EU because of lengthy visa processes. Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Turkey and the United Kingdom are prime examples of this. NATO should consider easing the access and support for obtaining a quicker visa for individuals coming from these markets.
NATO and other government organizations should turn their support more to specialized companies and work closely with them so that their needs can be understood to a greater extent. Close cooperation, knowledge sharing, building trust between NATO and industry is key for companies being able to offer more tailored and appropriate support. Working together on a regular basis, sharing advance requirements for upcoming projects and skill gaps is critical for allowing specialized companies to prepare, explore the market and respond with appropriate and timely support.
How does Brevco contribute to solving these challenges?
At Brevco, we have been working with governmental and commercial clients for over 14 years. We pride ourselves on building knowledge and understanding of what our clients
need in terms of specific skill sets and expertise. We work tirelessly with all our clients so that we can understand their expectations better. Everything we do, both internally and externally, is rooted in our tailored approach to clients, candidates and contractors.
To help our clients sustain their technological advantage, we provide targeted sourcing of security-cleared IT professionals worldwide based on diligent skill-gap analysis. We aim to connect all IT and security professionals with the projects where they are most needed. We seek to relieve our clients from the pressure of enduring costly and timeconsuming recruitment processes by offering immediate access to specialized IT experts in various fields. In addition, we plan and execute complex telecommunications and software development projects on behalf of our clients with our own in-house IT project management capacity. Coupled with healthy and robust processes, we use skilled, securitycleared, IT professionals to deliver trusted, timely and efficient services.
Why is this support different to companies offering similar services?
Our 14 years of experience in providing IT professional augmentation services has enabled us to fully understand what exceeds client expectations and what is merely providing a standard staffing service. We want to develop credibility and trusting relationships with our clients, and to accommodate this we are now organized differently than any other similar service provider. For example, we have an entire department dedicated to building a knowledge base and understanding of our clients and their programmes, initiatives and requirements. We use this knowledge to undertake comprehensive analysis and develop future IT skills forecasts which we feed to our talented recruiters so they can explore the market and prepare advance responses to meet client needs.
When it comes to our candidates, we offer them a smooth, supportive recruitment process, focused on both technical and soft-skills evaluation. Our recruiters make sure that clients gain access to professionals that not only have the sufficient IT skills, but also understand how to completely transition organizations into the new technology era.
To keep up with technology trends, and to make sure we have consistent access to fresh resources, we partner with local institutions and offer technical upskill programmes and training in line with where our client is headed in terms of technological initiatives. This way we can successfully close the skills gap by retaining IT professionals and have them readily available to be either directly embedded with our clients or become part of a team supporting our high-scale IT projects.
Once a candidate is engaged with us, they become one of our most valued partners. We support them by offering relocation packages, client briefs and tours, various advisory services, support in identifying the most suitable contractual methods, as well as consistent access to an abundance of professional and career opportunities. Our experience within the various NATO communities also enables us to guide our IT professionals through the security clearance process giving NATO quicker access to the skills it needs. Our contractors are truly taken care of in a unique way, and we consistently aim to build long-lasting relationships with them, and in turn we retain talent on behalf of our clients.
We are also unique because our services are engaged in a range of programmes in numerous NATO agencies and organizations – ACO, ACT, CMRE, NATO HQ and the NCI Agency. This has enabled us to develop an idea-sharing and knowledge transfer platform between these entities via our IT professionals, which is proving to be very successful. By doing this we ensure that experts are engaged and work together to improve the Alliance’s operation.
Ultimately, we take all our partners through a journey of trusted, responsive, engaging and problemsolving approaches, which is rare in today’s technology-driven environment.
