Annex B — Organization context

B.1. Internal context

DND/CAF is a complex organization comprised of two separate entities that collectively form the Defence Team: the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), and the Department of National Defence. As the only military organization in Canada, CAF fulfills a unique role in serving and protecting Canada and its citizens, and projects military force through the three environments: the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), Canadian Army (CA), and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). From a corporate perspective, DND provides administrative and support services to the members of the CAF. Both the CAF and DND are responsive to the Minister of National Defence through their respective leaders, the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) and the Deputy Minister (DM).

DND/CAF operates as federated L1s, with some parts of the organization being responsive to the DM, some responsive to the CDS, and some responsive to both the CDS and DM. These L1s are semi-autonomous, and frequently have independent business processes, different data requirements, and separate IT systems and applications. However, there are several L1s whose core processes touch all parts of the organization, for example finance, HR (both military and civilian), materiel, and real property. These different modes creates challenges for governance, standardization, interoperability, and data sharing.

Geographically, DND/CAF operates globally. While the majority of personnel are located within Canada, DND/CAF maintains personnel in a variety of permanent postings in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Additionally, deployed personnel can be located anywhere. These personnel also have varied access to DND/CAF data and systems: in some locations they will have full access, but in others (e.g. on ships during an extended period at sea) they will have limited access to data and systems other than those integral to the platform.

B.2. External context

There are a number of external influences on DND/CAF that must be factored into the data strategy. Perhaps most importantly for a military organization, the nature of conflict is changing. Conflict is increasingly becoming cyber-centric, where having data becomes critical in responding to threats. At the same time, data are frequently the target of cyberattacks, and can be used to advantage by Canada’s adversaries. Additionally, Canada’s partners and adversaries alike have access to data at their fingertips using mobile devices, and are using social media to not only gather data but also to spread disinformation and shape perception. With technology becoming commoditized, adversaries are rapidly gaining on Canada’s perceived information advantage, which increases the risk to CAF members in military operations.

The CAF must also be interoperable with its partners, including NATO and UN, both while on deployment and in general. Canada has also committed to sharing data with a variety of partners, such as the Five Eyes, and in these cases DND/CAF must comply with common data exchange standards and platforms that exist among these partners. The CAF must also be responsive to parliamentary oversight.

Another external influence is the advances in technology. The rise Internet of Things (IoT) and its connected devices and sensors is creating opportunities to capture data in scenarios where it was not possible before, resulting in large volumes of data. The rise of social media provides many opportunities to mine data to create advantage. Storage solutions are changing to accommodate the large volumes of data, with cloud and hybrid-cloud solutions growing in popularity, and converged architectures appearing. The number of applications for data continues to grow, with artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality and simulation all increasing in importance and popularity.

DND, as a public sector organization, also has to comply with GC policies and direction. The GC has released, or plans to release, new and updated policies and directives around digital approaches to government, digital exchange, and automated decision approaches such as artificial intelligence. The GC data strategy was released in November 2018. There are working groups established to, amongst others, document requirements for common reference data, share lessons-learned and best practices on data governance, and gather requirements for data cataloguing. All of these may have an impact on what DND/CAF can and should do.