Q: What are your key messages and success criteria for attending DSEI?

A: We’re really looking forward to joining DSEI this year as exhibitor and supporter. For me, it’s about DXC showing up as a committed partner to governments and national security organisations right across the world, but especially here in the UK. It’s about being trusted with mission critical systems and how we can deliver both infrastructure capabilities in the digital domain and analytic applications to make sure that the UK’s sovereign data and information is protected at all times.

In terms of success criteria, we are really looking forward to good engagement with a broad section across the global defence and security customer base. This is about building on the bedrock of DXC’s UK business to engage around global defence more widely.

Q: What role does DSEI have in building that collaboration between the end user and industry?

A: DSEI is part of our cycle of bringing new innovation to the table. DXC has invested tremendously around new capabilities that match the secure heft and scale we bring to the defence and security spectrum, as well as modern capabilities in apps and analytics. So it’s about engagement with customers and building those, and new, relationships. Importantly, the engagement at DSEI also provides a platform for SMEs and vital areas of innovation across the defence sector.

Q: Are there any areas of innovation which you’re particularly interested in?

A: We’ve heavily invested in apps, analytics, business transformation capabilities, and particularly agile techniques. It’s an area big companies have struggled with in the past and I’m really pleased with the work we’ve done over the last two years to bring that to bear with some of our UK defence and security customers.

Also, the way we work together to enable solutions which are more agile in their construct and allow us to deliver better outcomes faster via early value propositions which traditionally would have taken much longer to get to. We are increasingly seeing the benefit of this in our delivery. It's about how we deliver both commercial and then outcome-driven agility to deliver capability much earlier than we have in the past.

What we all want to be able to do is work towards an outcome-based set of contracts without scripted ways of how we’re going to get there.

This is about putting capability in the end-users’ hands much more quickly than we have historically, whilst also assuring ourselves of the quality of the products we deliver.

Q: How do you get around the challenges of sharing data across organisational and national boundaries?

A: It’s still a challenge but there’s some great capability which DXC and some of our partners are delivering which will make a real difference in this space. We’re really excited to talk about some capabilities that can transverse different security classification levels at DSEI '23. At the heart of it is how we integrate between different domains, different classifications, and even different countries. 

Furthermore, this year's theme "Achieving an Integrated Force" resonates with the work we have already been doing across the sector and is key to enhancing capabilities across forces and the various defence departments going forward. We are proud to be aligned with this theme through the transformational projects we continue to conduct.

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