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The Department of Defence has put out a Request For Information (RFI) for a digitisation that will "fundamentally reset" its workplace due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The department is looking for solutions that provide mobility governance and management functionality to support remote working, according to documents lodged with AusTender.
“In recent times, the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions resulted in an unprecedented number of Defence personnel working from home," the tender documents stated.
"This dramatic shift in the way Defence and society in general are conducting their business have made our society more virtually connected and reliant on digital and mobile technologies than ever before.”
In particular, the solution would include enterprise mobility management platforms, mobile application development platforms, device offerings and business process improvements.
To address this, Defence is looking for interested specialist businesses across a number of categories, including those involved in application development, management platforms, application vetting and assurance, security and identity, mobile applications, devices and accessories, gateways and mobility infrastructure.
“There is a transformative opportunity to fundamentally reset how, when and where work is done in Defence,” the document continued.
“With mobile technology revolutionising ways of working across industries and governments, Defence can leverage this technology to untether its workforce from fixed ICT and uplift and expand on its currently limited and disparate mobile solutions."
The department claimed its current roster of devices were "ineffective" at in supporting the full suite of activities performed by a "highly-mobile" personnel.
“The limited scale and functionality of [the Department of Defence’s Chief Information Officer Group (CIOG)]’s existing mobile device offerings, slow device procurement and provisioning, and delivery and assurance of new applications, have meant that meeting urgent and rapidly emerging requirements for mobile solutions is very challenging," the document added.
“Currently, there is limited enterprise governance and oversight of Defence’s mobility capability. Without an enterprise approach to govern, develop, and sustain mobile capability, scalable to all appropriate Defence personnel, Defence will continue to have a tethered workforce that relies on overly manual, paper-based, offline and fixed desktop-based processes.”
Issues include limited access to Defence-issues mobile devices and accessories, unreliable connectivity in some areas, slow and sometimes irrelevant device provisioning and bringing up the awareness of remote working.
Responses to the RFI itself must then be submitted by 28 September.
