About the DII Programme
DII Mission:
To deliver to Defence a secure and coherent information
infrastructure at minimum whole life cost whilst maintaining
continuity of service.
DII is essential to the future capability of the MoD and the
Armed Forces. The scale and the inherent complexity of DII presents
significant challenges to ATLAS and the MoD, all of which need to
be overcome. DII is far more than the provision of terminals - it
is a fully managed and supported infrastructure service, giving
user support twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, worldwide.
In addition to the terminals themselves, the Programme must also
deliver the supporting infrastructure including data centres,
individual site designs, user support and directory services, as
well as migrating existing MoD applications to operate on the new
infrastructure.
- Over 300,000 Users
- 150,000 Terminals
- 2,000 MoD Locations
- 500+ Applications
- Unclassified to Above Secret
- Fixed sites (UK and abroad) and Deployed HQs
A single Information Infrastructure
The MoD requires secure, high-quality information technology
both for the success of operations and to conduct its day-to-day
business. As in many other organisations, the MOD has developed
numerous IT systems to meet a wide range of needs over many years.
In 2000, the Department began to develop plans to replace these
diverse systems with a single Information Infrastructure to enable
better communication, to promote more efficient ways of working,
and to obtain better value for money.
Business Benefits
From the outset, the DII group and ATLAS have worked to
maintain a focus on the realisation of business and operational
benefits, as well as achieving other benefits, such as better ways
of working, more collaboration and easier communication. This focus
has, and will continue to be, a major influence on Programme
scheduling, with adjustments being made to optimise the benefits to
the MoD. On current estimates, DII will enable the realisation of
£1.5billion of efficiency savings across the Defence Change
Portfolio, over the 10 year DII contract.
Defence Operational Imperatives
In addition to supporting the structural changes of the MoD, the
DII Programme must also support operational requirements, which
cannot always be predicted and may require a rapid response from
inception to live operation. These have influenced programme
requirements, direction and scheduling.
- J1/J4 IOS - Interim Operations Support - In
October 2006 ATLAS received a request to provide services including
access to Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) for forces deployed
in Afghanistan. The project, known as J1/J4 Interim Operations
Support (J1/J4 IOS) now provides a capability that can handle
material classified as Restricted in operational theatres. The main
aim of the system, which comprises 350 mobile terminals and
accompanying servers, is to provide military personnel on
deployments with access to JPA and other logistics tools, allowing
them to monitor and manage their pay and annual leave. The new
system was successfully delivered in a very short period of time,
by May 2007.
- OVERTASK - fills a capability gap for
Communications and Information Systems (CIS) for deployed British
forces in Afghanistan. The MoD contracted ATLAS to fulfil the
requirement, essentially to replicate the existing NATO system by
providing an extension to the network, with access to NATO systems
and applications classified as Secret. The requirement comprised
some 200 terminals and associated servers. Following very rapid
work to ascertain the scope of the project, the new system was
delivered in August 2007 and is now operating successfully in
theatre. This success led to further opportunities for the OVERTASK
team, with a further 230 terminals deployed in April 2008. Recent
developments include a highly mobile and man portable version of
the OVERTASK capability which will allow the rapid deployment of
mission Secret CIS Capability.
Incremental Approach
Contracting, development and implementation of DII is based on
an incremental approach designed to de-risk the Programme and
enable the MOD flexibility in defining its future requirements.
This approach is based on changing operational and business
drivers, as well as affording the opportunity to ensure continued
value for money.
Solution Components
In addition to the challenge of the technical requirements, is
the challenge of immense scale: to establish DII as the single
information infrastructure used by the MoD, establishing security
domains from Unclassified to Above Secret; roll-out to over 2,000
fixed sites as well as to Deployed environments and maritime
platforms. DII must deliver this with common services, Medium and
High Grade Messaging and support access to legacy services and
infrastructure, whilst the MoD also undertakes other change
programmes and is deployed on operations.
