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On Thursday 14th September 2023, we attended a panel at DSEI which focussed on how the defence industry can acquire and nurture the digital skills needed to fuel the future of Defence. Claire Fry - Director Functional Integration for the Ministry of Defence Digital – chaired the panel and was joined by four panellists from the UK Cabinet Office, Ministry of Defence (MoD), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and cybersecurity members association - ISC2. The conversation centred on how defence must address both specialists and generalists, maximising the abilities of our current workforce and drawing new individuals from backgrounds where they may not have previously considered a career in defence and security. Ultimately, there were three main themes that were apparent in the panellist’s suggestions for tackling the skills gap:

Defining the skills

In large defence organisations, there is a tendency to categorise people using defence-specific terminology. It can be extremely alienating for those who sit outside of our industry, as they are unsure how their abilities are applicable to industry roles and do not see a clear route in. Furthermore, careers in our industry are often so intangible that industries cannot give young people a vision of what their future employment might look like.

The panel expressed how being able to define the roles and skills that are required is vital for attracting and retaining talent, as people need to be able to understand if their skillset is relevant and also have sight of the career pathways that are available to them. Jobs should be tagged with skills, allowing everyone to have access to the industry. One example of this is the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) framework, which defines the digital, data and technology roles in government and describes the skills needed to do them.

Additionally, we need to ensure we are engaging with the younger generation in a way that helps pupils visualise the jobs they can do with the skills they obtain through STEM education. One example that Claire Fry provided of this was the STEM initiative digital bursary scheme, which Strategic Command launched at DSEI this year.

Creating the right culture

In order to attract, nurture and retain the skills that we need for the future, it is vital that everyone gets involved with creating and driving a learning culture. The panel stressed the importance of creating a mind-set shift in defence, where organisations ‘build’ rather than ‘buy’ skills. Claire Fry referred to the example of how the MoD have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with both Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), so that personnel across the MoD will be able to learn and enhance their digital skills.

The discussion also turned to the dichotomy that often plagues the defence industry, whereby people are either ‘technical’ or ‘non-technical’, with the latter often perceived as ‘lesser’.

This mind-set is one which prevents us from taking advantage of diversity of thought and defence companies must start providing all of their employees with opportunities to gain digital and technical abilities without requiring prior technical training or expertise.

Furthermore, the panel suggested that leadership should set the example for through action. One of the panellists described how he knew a chairperson of a defence company who had taken an AI learning course, despite not having any technical background. This helped to set the cultural norm within the company, encouraging all employees to learn new technical and digital skills.

Interoperability & collaboration

The reality is that there is a global shortage of digital skills – it is not just a trend that we see only in the UK, nor just in defence. Along with many of our allied states, we often struggle with data sharing and knowledge transfer across teams and organisations. To retain advantage over our common adversaries, we must embrace multi-national collaboration and everyone across government, industry and academia must work together on the skills agenda, rather than trying to compete.

The panel suggested that when creating skills frameworks, we need to be mindful that they should be interoperable across government and industry, ensuring industry processes are embedded from the beginning. They also need to be interoperable with other international frameworks, striking a balance between national frameworks that meet our needs as a nation, but also meet the realities of the national market. Ultimately this will allow us to widen our talent pool – taking advantage of people (and their skills) from overseas.

How do we move forward?

Overall, for the defence industry to bridge the skills gap, it requires a multi-pronged approach. It starts with clearly defining the skills that are required for certain roles and raising awareness about the possible opportunities and career progression available to both current and future employees. Organisations must also address old-fashioned and restrictive mind-sets and embrace a culture of learning and development – investing in training and development programmes to upskill their existing workforce and attract new talent. Finally, it is clear that only through collaboration and interoperability with our allies can we build the skills of the future that we need, providing us with the edge we need to stay ahead of our common adversaries.

To learn more about why these skills can be so difficult to acquire (in various career stages) and how we can truly find and cultivate the talent that is needed to fuel the future of defence, be sure to read our Supercharged report.