Information enlisted in war on terror

Government scientists are to use OpenText’s LiveLink enterprise content management system as part of a programme of sweeping changes that will help them manage information more effectively in the fight against terrorism.

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) is an agency of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). It employs 3,500 scientists to provide impartial scientific and technical advice that will keep the MoD abreast of advances in modern warfare techniques.

DSTL’s decision to purchase an enterprise content management system is part of the agency’s wider iLab programme to make itself a more integrated and efficient organisation. The iLab programme includes reducing the number of DSTL sites from nine to three.

iLab’s high-level aim was to make the organisation more customer-focused, said Simon Lill, public sector sales director at OpenText.

“Information availability and using knowledge are key streams in the work programme,” he said. “The vision is of an integrated laboratory that’s highly efficient and effective, with scientists focused on their customer work and delivering leading science.”

The scientists required a content management system that would create strong audit trails, said Lill.

“The work that they do could be scrutinised in 100 years’ time,” he said. “There’s a lot of sensitivity around how you go through the provenance of information and making sure that it’s traceable.”

LiveLink’s integration with enterprise resource suite PeopleSoft and laboratory applications would make for a more streamlined workflow process, said Lill.

And with only three buildings, DSTL will have significantly less storage space, so the organisation has introduced scanning rooms where all new paper documents can be digitally imported into LiveLink.

DSTL was originally part of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), which was split into two divisions six years ago.

The other constituent of DERA, Qinetiq, became a commercial company while Dstl remained in the public sector.

“The changing world scene is what has driven a lot of this programme,” said Lill. “If you look at what they are responding to, it is changing issues around the way warfare is conducted.”

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