The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has awarded a three-year contract to Esri UK to establish its Strategic Geospatial Partnership. The new Partnership builds on a 20 year relationship between the MoD and Esri UK in which Esri UK has supported land, maritime and air domains with its technology and services.
The Partnership will involve Esri UK working with Defence Digital to help deliver an MOD-wide location strategy; a strategy that will enable UK Defence to best use the power of location as a true force multiplier, helping to achieve and maintain Information Advantage. As part of the Partnership, the MOD will be able to deploy the full suite of Esri’s ArcGIS products to extract insight from location-enabled data in an open, scalable and evergreen manner across its entire information architecture.
As well as world-leading Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, Esri UK will also provide a comprehensive package of support services to help bring the location strategy to life.
Maj Gen Richard Spencer, Director Delivery of Intelligence and Expeditionary Services within Defence Digital said, “This Strategic Partnership is an important step in Defence’s digital transformation programme. The extended use of Esri’s GIS technology will enable us to more easily create, capture, analyse and share location enabled information to make better-informed, data driven, decisions.”
Adrian Friend, Head of Defence, National Security and Public Safety at Esri UK, said, “We look forward to working closely with the MOD to help it bring context to its information strategy and ensure the power of location can be used to improve operational effectiveness.”
Led by the Chief Information Officer (CIO), Charlie Forte, Defence Digital brought together and replaced a number of organisations, including Information Systems and Services (ISS) in 2019. The Defence Digital organisation has an annual budget of over £2 billion and a team of around 2,400 personnel including military, civil servants and contractors. The organisation is responsible for making sure that effective digital and information technology (D&IT) is put into the hands of the military and business front line. It is guided by the D&IT Functional strategy.
Esri’s ArcGIS technology provides a framework for gathering, managing and analysing data. It analyses spatial location and organises layers of different types of information into visualisations using maps and 3D scenes. This capability reveals deep insights into data, such as patterns, relationships and situations, enabling users to solve complex problems and make informed decisions.