DInfoCom/0165 - Provision of Army Data Specialist Pilot Training

Data across the Army is siloed, fragmented, used for single purposes and whilst there is an ever-increasing demand, there remains limited skills to exploit it. We must treat data as a strategic asset, develop our people, establish policy, process and technology changes needed to support this goal otherwise the levels of change required will not be realised and we will allow adversaries to establish an advantage.

The centrality of data (in support of intelligent and information) is recognised in both the Integrated Operating Concept (and accordingly, the British Army Land Operating Concept) and the Multi Domain Integration JCN. The demand for data SQEP is evolving at pace and there are several projects and activities across the Army such as THEIA, Pj CADUCEUS and Pj ORION looking how best to develop pan army and deep data SQEP.

These Pj, less THEIA tend to be cap badge and CEQ focused, and whilst this is important, it misses the commonality across the Army for both military and civilian workforce for data skills. There needs to be a level of coherence to ensure development remains aligned to a quantifiable demand, but also ensures that data skills are not siloed as our current data is.

There is currently no formal training requirement set within Army; this compounded by the lack of SQEP makes defining and setting a requirement a long and complex activity. To expedite this and grow pan military/civil service SQEP a pilot using capability framework outcomes allows Army to learn from experience, rapidly grow SQEP and expedite setting a pan army demand/requirement for data skills moving forward.