UK Strategic Command represented in DataIQ 100 2023
The DataIQ 100 list for 2023 was revealed earlier this month featuring two MOD personnel.
Major George McCrea presenting at the Data IQ Summer Honours Launch 2022.
Caroline Bellamy, Chief Data Officer MOD and Major George McCrea, Chief of Staff for Royal Engineers (Geographic) Capability HQ, were among the names included in the list of the most influential data and analytics practitioners.
DataIQ has been tracking the rise of chief data officers, chief analytics officers, data scientists, data governance experts and the leaders of key vendors and service providers since 2014. Inclusion in the DataIQ 100 is a significant badge of honour and recognises peer-reviewed organisational and individual achievements among those nominated.
This year’s list is the second in a row which Major George McCrea, Chief of Staff for Royal Engineers (Geographic) Capability HQ. has been included on. His inclusion in the 2022 list marked him as the joint first military person to ever be nominated by DataIQ along with Major Luke Parker, also a geospatial officer from the Royal Engineers.
His military journey began back in 2007 when he left a career at Lloyds Bank to join the Army. What followed were postings in the UK and Germany in the Close Support and Armoured Engineering environment, as well as deployment on operations and exercises around the world.
After 7 years, Major McCrea shifted focus studying for a Geospatial MSc and subsequently held roles relating to military geospatial capability, including as a specialist advisor in NATO HQ. Most recently, he’s worked in the National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence, firstly in a command and leadership role within 42 Engineer Regiment (Geographic) before becoming Chief of Staff for the Royal Engineers Geographic trade and its 600 personnel.
As the capability HQ, George and the team are responsible for programmes and projects that help meet the needs of Defence. Working across the Defence Lines of Development, they focus on three lines of operation: platforms and services; engagement; and most importantly people. Their day-to-day work sees the HQ engaging with end-users, consumers, and programme offices to ensure UKStratCom are enabling the right outcomes to support leaders, commanders, and staff.
Speaking on the work of the profession, Major McCrea said:
We provide spatial data, analytics, insights, and visualisations of operations areas to the single Services. Where we sit in UKStratCom enables us to provide support more effectively to strategic, operational, and tactical situations.
At the end of the day, we’re all geographers, whether we know it or not, and when something happens often the first question asked is ‘where’ or, people will immediately reach for their phones to look at the map/navigation function. This is where the RE Geo capability and the National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence is so important as.
We look to provide location services across Defence to a number of different user communities. It is not just about maps either, it is about services and the provision of the same authoritative spatial data to all who need; ‘from Whitehall to Warrior’ all should have a single source of spatial data that they can access and request support in terms of analytics to augment and gain insights, thus providing a competitive advantage.
Within his years as part of the Trade, Major McCrea has seen first hand the benefits from digitisation of operations. Of particular note was Operation RESCRIPT which saw support focused on the delivery of multiple, complex, data feeds which would be unsuitable for printed maps.
The shifting towards more digital ways of working is supported by Digital and Data strategies which look to upskill the community’s data and spatial understanding. The Royal School of Military Survey and the RE Geo Coding club form part of this development, with personnel using automation to align concepts against ‘repeatable’ processes.
The analytics process is an example of where this automation is currently being used to harness data more effectively and efficiently. Junior soldiers, with coding acumen, developed a solution to cut down the time taken to apply standard requirements, creating extra capacity for analysts to focus on specific questions and higher-end analysis.