Innovation for a Safer Future: DASA Strategy 2021-2024 (Foreword and executive summary)
Published 4 May 2021
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1. Foreword from the Head of DASA
On behalf of Anita Friend and myself, I am pleased to welcome you to Innovation for a Safer Future: DASA Strategy 2021-2024. We are both extremely proud of the staff at the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) and the work they have done to put DASA on the map, helping Government find solutions to pressing defence and security challenges by connecting them with the best Innovators across the UK and, increasingly, from abroad.
The concept of an accelerator for UK defence and national security was established in the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) leading to DASA’s formation. We have recently marked our 4th anniversary. DASA finds and funds exploitable innovation for UK defence and security quickly and effectively while boosting UK prosperity. We are part of the Defence Innovation Directorate in the Ministry of Defence and are co-located with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. We are proud to have staff who live and work in every region and nation of the UK. By working locally, supporting and advising innovators of all shapes and sizes, we provide a critical link to pull through innovation to help the Ministry of Defence, Home Office, Department for Transport and other parts of Government keep this country safe by staying ahead of the threats we face.
When DASA was established in 2016, the defence and security situation was challenging and complex. As the Government’s Integrated Review – Global Britain in a competitive age (Mar 2021), sets out the picture has continued to evolve at a frenetic pace with intensifying threats to our way of life, international norms, and our wellbeing.
The return of persistent competition between nation states, advances in technology, and the coronavirus pandemic, have accelerated the need for rapid and innovative solutions in defence and security. The recent publication of the Integrated Review and the Defence Command Paper , MOD Science Strategy , The Defence and Security Industrial Strategy , and the Government Technology Innovation Strategy amongst others lay out our National resolve to meet those challenges. Together with you, whether you are an innovator, an official, a member of the Police and Emergency Services, or member of the Armed Forces, DASA is here to play its part in keeping our Nation and our people safe. Anita Friend / Andy Caldwell (Interim) Head of DASA
2. Executive summary
2.1 Supporting innovators with their ideas
DASA is innovative in developing its service offering; trying new ideas, building on evidence, creating processes and systems that meet the challenges we are aiming to solve, supporting innovators with their ideas, and seeking to accelerate the most promising ones into products and services that transform the defence and security of the UK. Our refreshed strategy reinforces DASA’s position as an exemplar innovation organisation that promotes best practice across Government, and seeks to build on its experience and learning.
2.2 Finding and encouraging the brightest to put forward feasible ideas to solve our problems
DASA has learnt that by reaching out to innovators across the UK and beyond we can encourage and support the brightest and best to put forward feasible ideas to solve our problems. We have understood that we need to reach innovators who did not realise that they could work within defence and security.
We have formed partnerships across industry and academia, leading to the development of clusters, collaborations, and engagements, which seek to bring together the innovators with the policy makers and capability owners to ensure that new ideas can be developed and integrated into service and used by those on the front line. Our refreshed strategy builds on our learning as we continue to strengthen and broaden our links with innovators seeking out the best innovative ideas.
2.3 Strengthening our collaborations with partners across HM Government
DASA knows the importance of working with our customers across the Ministry of Defence and wider Government, nationally and internationally, to better understand their needs, frame their opportunities into actionable competitions, and support projects as they mature so that each and every innovation has the maximum chance of making a difference to those customers.
To that end, we are developing and expanding our teams working directly within the Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Air Force and Strategic Command and their innovation hubs, to provide that bridge from a promising idea to a product ready to enter service. Our refreshed strategy deepens our collaborations with partners across HM Government aiming at increasing our competition throughput for finding National Security solutions from £40m to £60m per annum.
2.4 Turning solutions into capability
DASA acknowledges that business readiness, including commercialisation, is as important as technology readiness in the development of an idea into a solution fit for purpose. Through our refreshed strategy we will focus effort on increasing the pull through of innovative ideas supporting the exploitation and commercialisation of solutions into capability. Businesses that show technical promise will be given the opportunity, support and guidance to develop their business and systems readiness, through access to defence and security business support schemes, such as defence innovation loans, and by developing an innovation ideas marketplace for ideas to be brokered with larger organisations in a position to develop and commercialise them. This will be an area of focus for us with a new ‘Access to Mentoring and Finance’ service.
2.5 Maintaining our reputation
In addition, DASA knows the importance of measuring and demonstrating its successes. DASA already collates and analyses its management information; we will seek to develop the way we capture and present our data, to show how DASA makes a difference to UK defence and security capability, and UK prosperity over the longer term. We will continue to publish individual success stories, whilst at the same time highlighting the measurable effects we are having on innovation in the UK.
Finally, we realise that maintaining our reputation is key and that this is only possible because we have a great team of people. Through our refreshed strategy, DASA will continue to learn, providing a reliable and professional service to our customers and suppliers alike, and will use that to promote ourselves at events across the UK and beyond, to continue to attract the brightest and the best to help us with our mission.