ASD’s capabilities enable it to deliver on its purpose and strategic goals. For the duration of this corporate plan, ASD will place special emphasis on building and enhancing the capabilities needed to meet the challenges of the evolving strategic environment, including changes in technology and data analysis. It will invest in improving leadership skills and building a culture that leverages the strength of a diverse and capable workforce. It will build and foster partnerships to deliver value in this complex operating environment.
People and culture
ASD’s people are its greatest resource. The skills and experience of its people are in high demand across private industry and government. To ensure its success, ASD must continue to attract, develop and retain a diverse and highly skilled workforce.
In the period of this corporate plan, ASD will:
- mature its dedicated human resources and learning and development functions
- deliver strategic workforce planning to achieve the optimal future workforce
- develop and deliver a comprehensive attraction and recruitment strategy, focused on growing a diverse and capable workforce
- enhance its training and development programs, underpinned by a comprehensive capability development framework
- deliver a wellbeing program to safeguard the physical and mental health of its staff
- review its remuneration framework to remain an employer of choice.
Partnerships
ASD’s partnerships are critical enablers for its success in an increasingly complex operating environment.
In the period of this corporate plan, ASD will:
- foster its existing relationships and develop new approaches to deliver on mission related outcomes
- enhance its ability to work with key stakeholders and partners across multiple security classifications
- enhance partnerships with industry and academia – particularly in the fields of data science, cyber security, and technology
- strengthen relationships with key foreign counterparts, focusing on delivering outcomes of mutual benefit.
Tradecraft
ASD’s foreign signals intelligence, cyber security and offensive cyber operations missions require a highly skilled workforce, equipped with the right skills to be effective and successful at delivering its missions. The pace of technological change and evolving threat landscape increases ASD’s opportunities to develop new tradecraft, but also increases the challenge of keeping ahead. ASD needs to ensure that its analysts are equipped with the right skills and can deploy modern tradecraft against ASD’s toughest analytical problems.
In the period of this corporate plan, ASD will:
- continue to implement its multi-year, analyst-centric business transformation
- redesign its training framework, focusing on equipping its people with key skills to develop modern and innovative tradecraft
- evolve data and technology systems to support contemporary analytic requirements
Technology
Technology is at the heart of ASD’s capability. Mastering and adapting to technological change is crucial to enabling ASD’s ongoing success in delivering foreign signals intelligence, cyber security, and offensive cyber operations.
In the period of this corporate plan ASD will:
- implement its Enterprise Technology Strategy to deliver modern enterprise-grade capabilities that underpin leading-edge mission systems
- mature its portfolio management capabilities, ensuring its technology investment delivers the capabilities needed to meet its strategic goals
- deliver contemporary technology platforms that provide an enhanced user experience to its workforce
- optimise its technology investment portfolio to effectively strike the balance between current requirements and future capability.
Governance and risk
ASD’s status as a statutory agency has given it the autonomy to build enterprise governance and risk frameworks that are tailored to the unique nature of ASD’s work. As part of this work, ASD is strengthening compliance and oversight processes, which provide assurance that ASD acts within the spirit and the letter of the laws that enable us.
In the period of this corporate plan, ASD will:
- mature its risk management frameworks
- refresh its security functions
- grow its compliance and oversight functions, ensuring ASD maintains the highest standards of compliance with the laws that govern our actions
- continue to develop a fit-for-purpose financial management system.
Leadership and influence
The leadership skills of ASD’s people – at all levels of the organisation – are vital to its success. ASD’s leaders are at the forefront of delivering strategic initiatives, and supporting and developing the workforce.
In the period of this corporate plan, ASD will:
- ensure delegations and accountabilities are clear for all managers and supervisors
- enable governance structures and associated processes that improve the agility of decision-making in ASD
- invest in building the leadership and management skills of its people.
Diversity and inclusion
ASD’s workforce operates in the slim area between the difficult and impossible. Solving the toughest problems in foreign signals intelligence, cyber security and offensive cyber operations requires teams of clever, curious people with diverse and complementary skills. ASD’s strength, resilience, and creativity is derived from the different ages, backgrounds, genders, cultures, neurodiversity, physical abilities, religions and sexualities of its staff.
ASD is committed to providing a respectful and inclusive workplace.
In the period of this corporate plan, ASD will:
- continue to mature our diversity and inclusion goals as committed to in ASD’s first diversity and inclusion strategy
- develop an evaluation framework to monitor progress in achieving ASD’s diversity and inclusion goals.