OneDefence Data program to miss June delivery

Defence has conceded that the delivery of its half-a-billion-dollar OneDefence Data environment will now be in “the fourth quarter of this year”, instead of the end of this month.

OneDefence Data, or OneDD, is bringing together datasets from across Defence, with the goal of positioning “data as a strategic warfighting asset.”

KPMG is the program's preferred systems integrator.

The delivery of a final operating capability (FOC) - the milestone that signifies a working environment - had been contracted for this month, Defence CIO Chris Crozier told senate estimates in February [pdf].

Crozier provided an update to a different senate inquiry [pdf] last month, where he said that key roles on the program had been insourced, and that “detailed due diligence” had uncovered further “areas of rectification we are rectifying.”

He is less than a year into the CIO role and has inherited OneDD, which has been running for some time.

In a senate estimates hearing on Wednesday, Crozier conceded that the contracted delivery timeframe of June would not be met.

The primary reason for the delay is that Defence has had to stand up its own cloud-based environment to handle secret data, after a plan to use a capability from a hyperscaler fell through.

“The original [OneDD] contract required a hyperscaler that was not available,” he said.

“We’ve had to pivot to our own cloud instance and as a result of that our architecture needs to be reframed, so [OneDD] will go live in the fourth quarter of this year.”