Defence is ramping up efforts to “accelerate and enable” artificial intelligence adoption across the organisation, in part by tapping a data repository of around one billion unstructured documents.

The department established an AI centre within its data division at the end of last year, which now has a dozen full-time employees focused on scaling AI across both Defence’s military platforms and corporate functions.
Speaking at Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Sydney, chief data integration officer Paul Robards revealed the department has one billion data files in a single platform, with around 2 million new documents added each week.
“All of this information spans things like plans, directives, project management, risk management, lessons learned, records of discussion and so on,” he said.
"[It’s] a valuable source of information, [but] just one source.”
Other critical data sources include Defence’s ERP system, which is being progressively deployed with logistics, maintenance, finance and procurement modules going live in May.
Complementing these are “fifth generation” military platforms and data from drone surveillance, generating unprecedented volumes of information.
According to Robards, Defence is “swimming in data” but “needs to be able to use it better.”
“The opportunities are almost limitless,” Robards told the summit.
“Starting with corporate enabling services, we can deliver better outcomes for our people. We can maintain our equipment better through the use of AI.
“We can process our finances faster. We can optimise our use of logistics and the supply chain and inventory management.”
“There's all the sorts of things the considerations in that where AI can massively accelerate our opportunities to respond and do so faster and in a better way than we've ever been able to do before.”
However, Robards pointed to significant AI maturity gaps across Defence, with divisions ranging from low maturity with little activity, to "fairly advanced" maturity and "doing some fantastic things."
The AI Centre aims to bridge these gaps by connecting and uplifting projects across the organisation, alongside delivering workforce development.
Operating in “a hub and spoke model”, the centre “seeks to enable, not do everything,” balancing central coordination with skills development across various Defence divisions.
Underpinning the centre is the Defence Data Strategy 2.0 [pdf], which was released last year and outlined the need for increased data governance supporting a meshed data environment and coordinated, integrated data management.
Key priorities included building trust through zero-trust architecture and data-centric security, alongside better data integration and interoperability with a long-term milestone of “AI at scale”.
Robards also pointed to cultural challenges involved in introducing AI across a large hierarchical organisation such as Defence.
Noting, however, that Defence only became a unified department a decade ago, Robards added: “It's a journey. You can't change the culture of these things easily.
“[Defence] is an organisation of many parts... Should one part of the organisation be responsible for everything that goes from enabling through to the embedding of AI and military platforms?
"These are the sorts of things that we have to work out and deliver clear guidance on the sorts of responsibilities that the AI Centre would pursue.”