Members of the Armed Forces will carry on using Microsoft's outdated Internet Explorer 6 browser, contravening the government's own advice on internet security.

According to parliamentary written answers received by labour MP Tom Watson, the majority of government departments still require staff to use IE6. Most have plans to upgrade to the more secure IE7, and some to IE8, but the Ministry of Defence has no plans to change.

The MOD is implementing a secure desktop computing service for 300,000 users worldwide through its Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) programme, but defence minister Quentin Davies said: "DII currently uses Internet Explorer 6 and at the current time does not have a requirement to move to an updated version."

Tom Watson expressed his dismay at the response. "Many civil servants use web browsers as a tool of their trade. They're as important as pens and paper. So to force them to use the most decrepit browser in the world is a rare form of workplace cruelty that should be stopped."

Kable: MoD sticks with insecure browser

The MoD yesterday published its green paper "The Nation's Commitment to the Armed Forces Community: Consistent and Enduring Support".

This aims to build on last year's policy document "The Nation's Commitment: Cross-Government Support to our Armed Forces, their Families and Veterans" by

seeking a permanent shift in the way in which public bodies think about the military community, so that its special circumstances are taken into account at all stages, from policy formation to service delivery.

The MoD is therefore seeking to enshrine the principles of no disadvantage and special treatment where appropriate in all official thinking so that members of the Armed Forces and their families receive fair treatment at all times and are not disadvantaged as a consequence of their military service.

As well as explaining the government's vision for the future delivery of services to the military community, this latest green paper also launches a consultation on how Consistent and Enduring Support can be achieved and on the ways in which recourse could be sought, the so-called "Route for Recourse".

Although the green paper is heavily drenched in typical nuLabour-speak and the sort of jargon we have come to expect from all government documents which start off with a "vision", it does contain some promising and challenging ideas.

Information on the consulation, which ends on 31st October, can be found in the green paper on the link below.

MoD: The Nation’s Commitment to the Armed Forces community: a consultation

The Court of Appeal has today ruled against the MoD and decided that the Human Rights Act does apply to British troops when deployed abroad, even when fighting on the battlefield. The judgement means that the MoD has a legal duty to make sure that troops are supplied with proper equipment.
The MoD had appealed against a ruling made in the case case of Pte Jason Smith, who was killed in 2003 in Iraq, that sending soldiers out on patrol or into battle with defective equipment could amount to a breach of their human rights.

The MoD will now be taking their case to the House of Lords.

If it means that the guys on the frontline get the right equipment, that's all to the good..... as long as it doesn't compromise operations in the field.

BBC: MoD loses battlefield rights case
The Telegraph: Government loses soldiers' human rights appeal

The National Audit Office yesterday published its report "Support to High Intensity Operations". This report looks at how effective the MoD has been at supporting large-scale operations in Iraq and Afghanistan especially in terms of:
- the equipment provided and how it gets to the frontline, and
- the level of training the guys receive before they're deployed and the support they get once they have been.
The NAO recognises that "the provision of support for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is made more difficult because they operate in remote locations and harsh conditions."

• Upto March 2009 the MoD has secured £4.2billion of extra funding from the Treasury for Urgent Operational Requirements - helicopter upgrades, improved vehicle protection, early attack warning systems for bases and electronic counter-measures.
• Apart from Vectors, the vehicles purchased or upgraded have generally met the MoD's targets although there have been shortages of spares for some vehicles particularly when used in a role different to that originally intended (e.g. Mastiffs in Afghanistan).
• Armed Forces personnel throughout the chain of command in both Iraq and Afghanistan say that UOR equipment had performed well overall, including that procured to enhance protected mobility.
• The availability and serviceability of the helicopter fleets on operations have exceeded MoD targets though sometimes at the expense of fleets back in the UK.

Logistics

• Despite the challenging operational environments, the MoD successfully delivered around 300,000 personnel and 90,000 tonnes of freight to Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years. The Department has not consistently met its supply chain targets for the timeliness of delivery (Afghanistan 57% on target, Iraq 71%) but there are signs that the supply chain is becoming more resilient.

Pre-deployment training

• For Iraq and Afghanistan, pre-deployment training is responsive to lessons identified in theatre and commanders are confident of its quality. But it is constrained by a number of factors: insufficient time for training, difficulties in replicating operational environments and shortages in training equipment.

Support and welfare on operations

• There is widespread confidence in the medical services provided on the frontline. Survival rates from severe injuries have improved especially since the introduction of Medical Emergency Response Teams.
• Accommodation at bases meets most needs and personnel are generally satisfied with it, although conditions at forward operating and patrol bases are more austere. More permanent structures are replacing tents.
• The Deployable Welfare Package, which aims to provide welfare support to personnel on operations to maintain their emotional and physical wellbeing, is generally being successfully delivered in operational theatres although there are some problems at peak times.
• Both the Army and the RAF are struggling to meet "harmony guidelines" which should be determining the frequency between deployments.

Major problems

• There have been shortages of spares for some vehicles and insufficient equipment on which to conduct pre-deployment training.
• Equipment provided for operational training is not always at the same level as that deployed in theatre, making training less realistic.
• The MoD’s performance against supply chain targets has been variable and lower for the highest priority demands.
• There is a significant difference in the provision of welfare packages at main operating bases and at forward operating and patrol bases.

National Audit Office: Support to High Intensity Operations

They were meant to fill the gap left by the demise of Action Man. They were meant to raise the profile of the Armed Forces. Instead the new range of model toy soldiers, marketed by Characetr Group the aegis of the MoD, have come in for a load of complaints as being too white, too male and too macho - definitely not sort of role models suitable for boys in today's Britain.

Back in January when the new range of toy soldiers was launched I warned there might be trouble from the pc brigade and indeed it is rather surprising that in these bright New Labour days

the manufacturers didn't produce models that better reflected Britain's wonderful multicultural and diverse society.

The Mail: Toy soldiers under fire: The all-male and all-white MoD heroes

Government "improves the situation" is the sort of spurious logic that we've come to expect from Labour ministers. Yes, of course it improves the situation - allowing one additional Gurkha veteran to stay in this country improves the situation. What is particulalrly galling is that this cynical and callous comment comes from the Immigration Minister who has been letting hundreds of thousands of economic migrants - coming from God knows where and with no claim at all to live here - into this country every year.

The Government's new set of criteria, which will now have to be met before a Gurkha veteran can come to the UK, have themselves been cynically designed to make it virtually impossible for rank-and-file Gurkha veterans to satisfy.

By failing to respect the debt of honour that is owed by the British people to the Gurkhas and by betraying the veterans and the families of the 45,000 who have laid down their lives fighting with honour and courage for our country, this Labour Government is dragging the rest of us down to their miserable level.

BBC: Fury over Gurkha settlement plan

nuLabour in its paranoid death throes is increasingly cracking down on the long-held liberties of British citizens. One of its victims is freedom of speech.

Reading today's newspapers you would therefore not be surprised to see several articles accusing the MoD of banning Service personnel from social networking websites.

The MoD has strongly refuted these claims asserting that service personnel "are perfectly entitled to express their opinions on issues unrelated to work without seeking any authorisation". It is only on matters relating to defence that restrictions apply and prior authorisation must be sought; the military censors do not put a virtual blue line through social internet chat..... not yet anyway.

The MoD's policy is defined in its Defence Instruction and Notice "Contact with the Media and Communicating in Public". In line with the recommendations of the National Recognition Study this policy expressly encourages dialogue with the public:

"All members of the Armed Forces are encouraged to engage with the public about what they do."

"New and emerging internet technologies present significant opportunities for communicating with the public. Service personnel are encouraged to use self-publishing on the internet or similar channels to communicate with the public directly..."

"Day-in-the-life" or online diary type articles appear reasonably regularly in the press. These would obviously have been passed over the censor's desk. But unfortunately they would also have been subject to MoD spin-doctoring.

"Presentational aspects are an integral part of all MoD activity and decision-making. It is a core task of all personnel to consider how to portray their activities in an interesting and accessible way, for both the internal and external audiences."

Many of us would welcome the opportunity to read blogs containing first-hand, un-spun posts from service personnel, especially from the frontline, but it would be naïve of us to expect such accounts not to have been subject to censorship.

MoD: Defence in the Media: Soldiers not banned from Facebook etc
Telegraph: Soldiers banned from MySpace and Facebook

On a related matter, the MoD was accused of poor PR in an article in PRBlogger (Ministry of Defence PR staff uneducated about online?) for its failure to refute a negative report which appeared in the Economist. In its response to PRBlogger the MoD made the interesting comment that it does in fact refute significant inaccuracies appearing in the mainstream media but it does so anonymously, using pseudonyms. As an example the MoD referred ot its comment on an article in The Mail - ironically about the alleged ban on using social networking websites - where it used the pseudonym "DH".

MoD: Discussion on www.prblogger.com
The Mail: Soldiers banned from using MySpace and Facebook

The MoD is planning a summer campaign, code named Operation Solomon, which aims to exploit the Recession and draft thousands of new recruits into the UK's Armed Forces in a bid to reverse the declining numbers of recent years.

Recruitment centres across the country are already witnessing a massive increase in applicants desperate to seek a bolt hole away from the dole queue and extra staff are already having to be taken on to deal with the surge. Inquiries at recruitment centres have doubled over the last two months to 24,500 and queues are building up at the doors.

With the obvious demand that there is to get into the Services, is it necessary for the MoD to go to the expense of staging a recruitment campaign at all? Why not just sit back, tick the boxes and put the £14million recruitment budget to better use?

You also wonder whether the motives behind many of these new recruits will sustain them through basic

training. It costs a lot to bring a raw recruit up to the standards expected by today's Armed Forces (particularly as these days they also have to be taught the 3Rs) and you wonder whether there will be a reasonable return on the investment involved.

Just as the Recession is driving the unemployed towards the Colours so too it must be giving those contemplating leaving the Services second thoughts. Whereas once a skilled ex-soldier could expect to walk into a higher paid job on civvie street, today that is no longer the case. And it has been the loss of experienced, fully trained service personnel which has been so debilitating for the Armed Forces.

Would it not be wiser for the MoD to redirect Operation Soloman away from drawing in large numbers of raw recruits and towards improving Service conditions to retain those who are already beginning to have cold feet about leaving?

The Express: The Army signs up recession's jobless

The efforts made by the MoD to improve the level of protection provided to UK forces on the ground in Afghanistan has led to a major increase in the amount of money the MoD is having to ask from the Treasury this year

Last November, the MoD said that it would need an additional £3.7billion to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq (£1.4b) and Afghanistan (£2.3b) this year.

Now in February the MoD has had to revise its forecast for 2008/09 to almost £4.6billion - that's 25% up on the figure of three month's ago.

These figures also represent a 50% increase on the costs for 2007/08.

The extra cash is not only needed for improved troop protection, particularly new armoured vehicles, but also to cover the likely cost of the equipment that will be left behind in Iraq when UK forces are withdrawn later in the year.

Of course this is just small change when compared with the amount of cash the Government has been spending to bail out its friends in the City.

The Telegraph: Cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan rises to £4.5bn

also
The Times: British cost of Iraq and Afghanistan reaches £13bn

There was more disturbing news this week about the level of security being provided on the MoD's IT systems.

First off was the report in Tuesday's Telegraph that the MoD was still failing to meet the data security standards laid down by the Government following the 2007 debacle of the loss of 25million child benefit records. In response to a

parliamentary question, the MoD admitted that only 27% of its IT systems complied with the new data-security standards. Give the MoD its due, it has a lot of computer systems to assess. It will of course be a lot easier to upgrade the MoD's new monolithic DII system for the security breaches which will inevitably come to light in the future as there'll only be one system to fix; indeed speed of bug fixing was one of DII's big selling points.

The second article was in Friday's Sun which sensationally reported that "experts are battling a computer supervirus that has crippled military intelligence’s email system." Apparently the virus has meant that thousands of MoD computers have had to be shut down. According to GCHQ the bug was introduced by a single official in some part of the MoD empire who was synchronising his i-Pod.

All very worrying.

The Telegraph: MoD's IT systems 'do not meet Government's own standards', audit finds
The Sun: Forces hit by email superbug

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has just reported that the Armed Forces' Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) programme is so far behind schedule that not only is it costing £millions more to implement but also that it is putting the country at risk as national security is having to rely on obsolete systems.

The Basics

• The MoD needs high quality, fully integrated information technology to achieve its goals, both on operations and in the UK.
• It is currently replacing hundreds of existing computer systems with a single new system, called the Defence Information Infrastructure (DII). This is being developed by the ATLAS consortium led by the infamous, many would say disastrous,US IT company EDS.
• The MoD intends to have some 150,000 terminals supporting 300,000 users at more than 2,000 sites, with additional capability on deployed operations and Royal Navy ships.
• DII must be able to handle material classified as Restricted, Secret and Top Secret.
• The DII programme began in March 2005 and will cost an estimated £7.1 billion by 2015, if fully implemented.

What's gone wrong

• The implementation of DII has suffered from major delays.The Committee questioned the choice of the Atlas consortium - especially EDS which was been responsible for other troubled Government IT projects including the notorious Child Support Agency system - to deliver the programme. Committee chairman Edward Leigh described EDS as "a company whose track record of delivering Government IT projects has not been exemplary" and said that the consortium had "underestimated" the complexity of the software it was creating.
• Whereas 62,800 terminals should have been installed by the end of July 2007, only 45,600 were in place at the end of September 2008!
• The main causes of delay were the programme’s over-optimistic assumptions about the condition of the buildings into which DII would be fitted and the consequent selection of an inappropriate and unresponsive methodology for installing terminals.
• DII also provides a range of core software such as word processing, email, internet access and security to run on the new system. This should all have been available in June 2006, but less than half of the requirement had been delivered two years later in June 2008!
• The slow pace of software design has been caused primarily by the ATLAS consortium’s inability to meet the MoD's requirements.

The result

• The MoD’s existing computer systems have had to be used for longer than intended, with the increased risk that one or more of them will fail.
• The forecast cost of the DII Programme has also increased by an estimated £182 million.
• Although the MoD has been able to protect benefits of the programme, some benefits will materialise later than planned.
• The programme is 18 months behind schedule. Currently implementing 3,400 units per month, the rate need to increase to 4,300 if the MoD's latest deadlines are to be met.

So there you have it.

HofC Public Accounts Committee: Defence Information Infrastructure
The Sun: £1billion MoD PC blunders
The Register: MPs bitchslap MoD mega-IT architecture project

Action Man: MoD style  [16/01/09]

The US Army may well be wooing young Americans with high-tech video and xBox games (see below) but here in the UK we do things differently, in a more traditional sort of way.
In a bid to raise the profile of Britain's Armed Forces and also to raise a bit of much needed cash to fill the MoD's empty coffers, HM Armed Forces Ltd is launching a new and updated version of the Action Man toys of the 1960s.
When Army chiefs gave their endorsement to the brand they were hoping that the highly-detailed figures will capture the imagination of a new generation of children.

The soldier figure wears an exact miniature of the desert camouflage combat clothing, boots, body armour, SA-80A2 assault rifle and Personal Role Radio in use with British troops in Afghanistan. The toys will go on sale from May 8th to coincide with VE Day.
This venture represents the MoD's latest foray into the commercial world, after the cash-strapped RAF last year launched a range of branded products including bikinis, duvet covers, sunglasses and watches.

The MoD insists that the toy project was intended more to raise the Forces' profile than to give a desperately-needed boost to the Forces' coffers at a time of severe financial crisis.

I wonder what the pc brigade will be saying.

The Telegraph: Ministry of Defence launches 'Action Man'

When it comes to stolen security passes, the Ministry of Defence scoops the top prize. Of the 48,000 government passes that have gone missing since 2001, the MoD accounted for 38,000 of them or almost 80%.
What's even more alarming is that the incidence of loss is increasing and now runs at 23 a day.

Work and Pensions Minister James Purnell is doing his bit, managing to lose his pass over the Christmas break.
To lose one card is unfortunate, to lose 50,000 is verging on the careless.

The Register: MoD tops lost security pass league