As demand for NCIA projects and services grows exponentially, early engagement with customers is essential for consolidating excellence in delivery for the Alliance, while adopting new and more efficient working processes, and harnessing technological innovation at the same time. Early engagement for NCIA means developing strong partnerships with stakeholders to understand upcoming capability requirements as soon as possible and in return providing critical expert feedback on technical feasibility and potential challenges.
In this endeavour, ACT is a unique partner for NCIA. NCIA and ACT are already collaborating extensively with a growing annual programme of work now worth over 25 million euros. NCIA support for ACT stretches across a broad variety of projects and services, including deployable CIS, core services, cyber capabilities, maritime, land, and air command and control, SATCOM, and data science and artificial intelligence, to take a few examples.
This cooperation includes larger efforts in support of NATO defence planning and the development of key capability package plans, such as, NCIA’s recent transfer of thousands of ACT and Joint Force Command (JFC) Norfolk devices to the cloud, as part of NATO’s wider digital transformation agenda.
The visit of Vice Admiral Asquith was testament to the excellent collaboration between NCIA and ACT. The introduction of early engagement between ACT and NCIA will enhance the Alliance’s capacity to rapidly and effectively adopt new technologies, and strengthen NATO’s deterrence and defence posture in the face of potential crisis and conflict scenarios.