As a key national security agency, the Australian Federal Policy has access to some of the most sophisticated western technology available to carry out its many and varied roles.
But how do you keep across the world’s fast-evolving emerging technology, while still maintaining the bomb-proof resilience of the more mundane but critical platforms that are providing existing operational support.
Meet AFP chief technology officer Krissie Auld, an almost accidental tech executive, who started her career as a researcher with the National Parks and Wildlife Service investigating breeding and habitats of waterbirds.
The role of an environmental researcher might seem a long way from the frontier edge of national security tech. But having spent time in senior technology roles across the public and private sectors, including with the NSW Government and with Microsoft, she has build an interesting perspective on the world.
In this episode of Delivery: A GovTech Podcast, Krissie Auld talks in detail about strategies for horizon scanning on emerging technologies and how she manages vendor relationships to leverage a broader view of the technology world.
Ms Auld says the AFP maintains a strong working relationship with the Office of National Intelligence, particularly on horizon scanning, to keep across new technology and new capability, whether from a threat perspective or an opportunity.
Given that the AFP can be working with the bleeding edge of new technology in its work, Ms Auld says a key to the success of the organisation is in making sure its operational platforms are reliable and flexible enough to enable the adoption of emerging new technologies, fast.
“You want to make sure that you set aside your foundation technologies,” Ms Auld says. “You want them to be secure, you want them to be resilient, you want them also to be responsive to new technologies.”
“Ultimately, when you’re an institution that is built on trust, you want those [foundation tech operations] to be trusted and relied upon.
“When things get difficult, or we’ve got hard operations, you want your mission-critical infrastructure to be relied upon.
“With the emerging tech, we have really good relationships with some of our government partners, like ONI, and we work really closely with them to bring across new and emerging technologies.
“We [also] work with them to let them know what wicked problems we’re trying to solve, and where we need help solving them outside our standard technologies.”
Having worked in a previous role within the NSW government with current Digital Transformation Agency chief executive Chris Fechner, Ms Auld says she has adopted Mr Fechner’s view of how relationships with industry vendors can best be leveraged.
“When it comes to the larger tech companies, what we are working more and more on being more open with them about our needs and where we think we need to go,” she said.
“So we are opening the kimono a little bit and sharing our goal and our missions, and [looking to] understand how they can help us with that.”
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