On "Toward Agile Procurement for National Defence"

June 12, 2020

On today's Defence Deconstructed Podcast, we feature a discussion with Douglas Dempster, William Richardson, and Elinor Sloan about a recent Policy Paper they wrote along with Dave Perry and others, "Toward Agile Procurement for National Defence: Matching the Pace of Technological Change," published by the Canadian Defence and Security Network and CGAI.

Defence Deconstructed is part of the CGAI Podcast Network and today’s episode is brought to you by the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI).

Participant Biographies:

Elinor Sloan: CGAI fellow. Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, and is a former defence analyst with Canada’s Department of National Defence. She is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada (BA), the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton (MA), and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (PhD).
Major-General (Retired) Doug Dempster: served as the Defence strategic planner, and later as NATO Assistant Secretary General for Executive Management and head of the Centre for Executive Leadership at the University of Ottawa.
William Richardson: recently completed his Master’s studies at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. His research focuses include western air power, interoperability and defence procurement. He currently works as a policy analyst at Global Affairs Canada.

Host Biography:

Dave Perry (host): Senior Analyst and Vice President with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

Related Links:

“Toward Agile Procurement for National Defence: Matching the Pace of Technological Change" by William Richardson, Kalen Bennett, Douglas Dempster, Philippe Dumas, Caroline Leprince, Kim Richard Nossal, David Perry, Elinor Sloan and J. Craig Stone

Recommended Readings:

"Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress" by Steven Pinker
"The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz" by Erik Larson

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Ian Mack commented 2020-06-15 13:41:19 -0400
As with the excellent paper, I worry that this will merely be seen as “interesting” to the Government defence procurement authorities. This paper nicely makes the case for a separate corporate outside-of-government agency to be stood up firstly (in a pilot mode) to deliver agility where it is really needed now in defence procurement – in the information technologies. Once it proves itself as agile and capable, it could become “THE” DPA for all weapon systems platforms. To make the changes discussed here and elsewhere year-in and year-out, the culture of the current system will never be able to make the transformation needed.