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Departmental Information and Communications Technology

Volume 482: debated on Tuesday 4 November 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when he expects a design solution to be available under the Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) programme for the Falkland Islands; and if he will make a statement. (232106)

Overseas site solutions are designed to meet individual technical, physical, environmental, communications requirements and circumstances at each location. These necessarily take time to develop. The Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) programme has delivered infrastructure to support the implementation of the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) application in the Falkland Islands and is currently developing the DII (Future) overseas solution, which should mature during 2009.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the reasons are for the time taken to (a) design and (b) implement an effective encryption mechanism under the Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) programme; and if he will make a statement. (232107)

The programme is already successfully delivering fully encrypted DII(F) laptops to personnel at various sites.

The time taken to design and implement an effective encryption mechanism for other removable devices and media under the Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) (DII(F)) programme is driven by the need to ensure the designs themselves are robust and capable of countering known and projected threats to the Department's information assets as well as operating correctly when connected to the DII(F) core infrastructure. Devices and their encryption mechanisms must be thoroughly tested and accredited to meet national governmental security standards before they can be deployed.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when he expects the completion of an overseas design solution for the Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) programme; what the reasons are for the time taken; and if he will make a statement. (232110)

Germany is the major overseas site and at this time some 5,500 Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) DII(F) terminals have been successfully delivered there. Solutions for other overseas sites must be designed to meet technical, physical, environmental, communications requirements and circumstances at these sites, which necessarily take time to deliver. These solutions are expected to mature progressively during 2009.