Ministry of Defense aims for ‘adaptable’ IT infrastructure

The Ministry of Defense wants to get rid of large tenders for the long term. Instead, the government wants to purchase ready-made software packages where possible and implement them themselves. This should result in cost savings.

Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert announced this to the House of Representatives on Tuesday. In a letter to Parliament she writes that purchasing and realizing a large IT project is impossible these days, because then people quickly run behind the facts. “The technology and the possibilities are changing rapidly and the organization and the outside world would also change during the long term.”

The minister is therefore coming up with new outlines for future it policy. In it she outlines, among other things, that she is striving for a ‘modular’ IT infrastructure. This means that the government purchases software components off-the-shelf, so that the most recent software can be obtained faster and cheaper. This would enable faster use of the ‘knowledge and expertise’ of the IT world. However, Defense will continue to have its own developers, for example to build specific software for which there are no ready-made market solutions.

With a modular IT infrastructure, Defense is following its colleagues in the United Kingdom and Germany, who have been doing the same for several years now to remediate their ‘highly compartmentalised IT landscape’. Although Defense wants to purchase ready-made software products in the long run, according to Hennis-Plasschaert this does not mean that the government will lose control. According to her, Defense continues to keep the reins. For example, the Ministry of Defense does not outsource certain tasks, such as protecting state secrets.

Hennis-Plasschaert emphasizes in her letter to the House of Representatives that in the coming years more money must be spent on the IT infrastructure of Defense. She reports this after it became known that there are major ICT problems at her ministry. For example, there are many outdated systems, which means that the chance of failure is high. Last year, up to and including 2017, 40 million euros had already been included in the budget to tackle the problems. Even then, as far as Hennis-Plasschaert is concerned, investments must continue.

The minister writes: “In the longer term, the outdated design of the current IT cannot be maintained. The costs of management and maintenance will rise sharply, while continuity and reliability will decrease. Doing nothing is therefore not an option. In order to be able to support the Defense organization in the future, further innovation and modernization is necessary.”