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DECS

The UK Ministry of Defence is a key Government department with extremely sensitive and broad ranging responsibilities.

It is charged with procuring and maintaining equipment of every kind for army, navy and air force, and then for managing and deploying the armed forces of the UK in order to deal with complex global commitments.

Like all other departments, the MoD was given the challenge of dramatically improving its levels of efficiency and accessibility by the UK Government in 1999. This meant playing a full part in the drive to modernise public services by making all government related dealings electronic by 2005 and ensuring that 90% of low value purchases were made electronically by 2001. This was the challenge, laid down by Government, which led directly to the creation of the DECS project.

The task

For the MoD, the modernisation challenge translates into specific action in four areas. To reduce logistics costs (by 20%) while improving performance; to raise the standards of command and management; to improve all aspects of the MoD’s dealings with business and the public, and to become a true knowledge based organisation. Given the sheer scale of the numbers involved, these goals add up to some highly ambitious targets.

Within the MoD, for example, the procurement budget in 2000 stood at €9 billion and the logistics budget was €7 billion, with €33 billion of assets being managed by the logistics organisation and 13,000 contracts being managed by the procurement team. Achieving the transformational results being asked for by the UK Government represented and still represents a dramatic challenge. A truly innovative set of solutions would be required.

The response

The MoD decided to take a major step forward by creating a fully transparent, “integrated acquisition space”, using concepts that are now more familiar to us as an Adaptive Supply Chain. It was based on the idea of creating a common space in which procurement, logistics and project management could be collaboratively managed by teams drawn from many different organisations (Ministry, suppliers, end users, prime and secondary contractors, external specialists) all in the conditions of unbreachable security demanded by such a sensitive activity.

These concepts were cutting edge when first considered, in 1998, and for most organisations still remain very much ahead of the game. Capgemini, however, did have a conceptual framework capable of turning the vision into reality. So it was that, after a lengthy development and proving period, the MoD signed a 10 year managed services contract with Capgemini to provide and manage the Defence Electronic Service framework (DECS).

The project

DECS was conceived from the outset as both an advanced environment for open trading and as an increasingly important location for continuous, collaborative working. DECS, therefore, has the potential to provide a single entry point to a range of key capabilities, including purchasing, engineering, inventory management, asset management and project management.

Functions

This enables DECS to function as the key electronic interface between the Ministry of Defence and the commercial world, providing intelligent connections between the MoD and its trading partners. It also provides an adaptive supply chain for the entire defence community, from end users (the armed forces and their civilian contractors) back to prime contractors, logistics specialists, component manufacturers and everyone else with a part to play in keeping the UK’s defence capability up and running.

The secure nature of the infrastructure enables the development of more sophisticated functions, as well. Negotiation and payment can now happen within a secure, online trading environment. In addition, the launch of the Shared Working Environment (SWE) makes it possible for the most complex and sensitive projects to be managed collaboratively by multi-disciplinary teams from a wide range of backgrounds.

The value proposition

The significance of DECS increases all the time as it routinely handles more projects and more transactions each year. After three years of activity (the managed service agreement was signed in the summer of 2000) we can see that many of the anticipated benefits are now being achieved.

From the MoD perspective, it enables convergence between the different services supported by standardised, low cost working across key areas of activity, such as inventory management and procurement. Supplier relationships are also easier to manage and efficiency improvements become more achievable.

From the supplier viewpoint, DECS has the capability to reduce their costs at all stages of the process, while at the same time opening wider sales opportunities and simplifying the entire process. Users have high levels of confidence in the system because they have seen for themselves just how dependable it is.

To give just one example of this attitude: fuel supply management to the armed forces has been added to DECS as a relatively new service. The Bulk Fuel community across all three services now use the system to record fuel checks that allow them to plan stock purchases and stock movements in line with current and future operational requirements to a degree of accuracy that allows stock management and cost benefits previously not possible.

How it works

DECS is one of the first examples of a genuinely adaptive architecture to be designed, built, delivered and proven in action anywhere in the world. Though developed for a major Government department, it is conceptually very much the same as any corporate adaptive IT architecture approach, designed to help a wide range of partners in remote locations work together efficiently.

The original rationale for the DECS architectural approach can still be seen as an appropriate expression of the logical justification for adaptive architecture. It was to deliver a successfully authenticated, authorised user on a secure connection to the appropriate business application and information.

Given that the user concerned might be based in any one of hundreds of different commercial organisations, thousands of locations and even many different countries; and given that the information they would be working with is highly sensitive, the performance standards for this first implementation of adaptive architecture always were extraordinarily high. The original design for DECS conforms in every significant way to the standard approach to Services Based Architecture used today across all vertical industries by Capgemini.

The architectural advantage
In a service architecture based environment, different technology resources are maintained in autonomous layers, with standard interfaces enabling them to be rapidly configured in exactly the combinations needed to handle specific user requirements. This enables technology to be presented to users in the form of services rather than simply as specific applications or routines. Not only is this a more intuitive way for human beings to interact with technology, it also enables dynamic, real-time configuration of resources, ensuring that users received what they need, in the form and at the time that suits them best.

Technology components
In the DECS architectural structure, individual services use standard interfaces to connect with a virtual data hub, supported by a messaging and workflow layer. Users enter DECS through an authentication, authorisation and secure access layer. This uses a directory services layer to match the user’s role and authentication levels in order to open up the specific services (and levels of service) that they have been authorised to use.

In this way, transparency, ease of access and speed are contained within a highly secure framework, combining efficiency with security, no matter how many potential users may be involved. The DECS architecture has been designed, built and managed by Capgemini, but some of the industry’s leading technology players are involved as partners and suppliers of specialised services. These include key vendors, such as Oracle, SAP and Microsoft, key hardware providers, such as HP and Sun, and a range of networking service providers and specialist partners, ranging from Cisco and Novell to Axway and Requisite systems. DECS is, therefore, a classic example of collaborative working at the design and management stage, as well as in the way users work with it.

Results

DECS is one of those public service technology projects people rarely hear about because they do not usually go wrong. After three years of use, the system has consistently met or exceeded demanding SLA’s concerning system availability, message delivery and customer support. In doing this, it has combined high quality service with an excellent security record. Availability, for example, has consistently been over 99% across all services, well above the industry-based SLA of 98%.

Basic performance has therefore regularly exceeded expectations, but the most important advantages of DECS can be seen in the speed with which the Services Architecture structure enables development and deployment of new services. Core purchasing services were rapidly implemented, allowing the MoD to achieve key business objectives of replacing its existing Naval EDI system and launching its Industrial Prime Vendor programme.

Based on reusable components and standard interfaces, elements of the architecture can be reconfigured to provide a wide range of new services. These have included the new fuel management services (based on SAP tools). Each of these has been built, rolled out and put to work in timescales that could only have been dreamed off in the pre-DECS world.

The future

Recent developments have seen an extension of the current MoD - Capgemini management agreement in order to enhance existing services and bring new functionality online, over the period up to 2010, with emphasis on the P2P (purchase to payment) service. Today, more than 300 trading partners are working with the MoD via DECS and 14 Integrated Project Teams are using the shared working environment capability of DECS to manage sensitive and extremely complex projects.

The architecture is now proven to work and the system has the confidence of users. Right from the outset, DECS was positioned (as all services architecture projects must be) as technology designed to enable business strategies. As the business profile of the MoD continues to develop in the years ahead, so will DECS.