Recommendation 7

In its report, the NAO draws attention to the slow progress wider government and the Department have made with previous digital strategies.13 We wanted to know why the Department thinks its most recent strategy will succeed, given that it has been so difficult in the past. The Department reflected that it is now starting to understand how digital technology can affect its ability to win, and that this means it has become an agenda for the whole of Defence. The Department explained that, for the first time, it is tackling the challenge with the support and commitment of all its senior leadership.14 Nonetheless, it recognised that transforming the Department in the way it wants will require significant cultural change.15 The Department also said that its senior leadership team are meeting regularly to discuss priorities for the digital transformation of Defence, as part of a programme of work called ‘digital exploitation for Defence’ to help elevate the status of digital for Defence.16 We asked how the Department intends to work across all its technology and data, when the chief information officer (CIO) only controls £2.7 billion of its £4.4 billion spend on digital. The Department told us that Defence Digital’s finance director will soon have visibility of all significant digital business cases or investment decisions made across 16 Defence organisations. It hopes this will help de-duplicate and better coordinate its digital investments.17 Measuring progress