Flight Lieutenant Amy Phillips-Mahon CEng MIET MBCS of the Cyberspace Professions Implementation Team, RAF Digital, explains how organisational transformation in line with SFIA is helping the RAF face its challenges against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
In today's fast paced digital world, maintaining a highly skilled workforce is more challenging than ever before. With technology evolving at an unprecedented pace, traditional methods of preparing for future trends quickly become outdated. Professionals need to ensure they continue to possess the skills that will ensure continuous employability, while organisations need to create an environment that is successful in recruiting and retaining top talent. This has prompted the Royal Air Force (RAF) to undertake a significant organisational transformation program.
The organisational structure of the RAF has not changed substantially for the last 70 years. Currently, officers are employed within a branch which represents a specific area of expertise — for example logistics or engineering. Enlisted aviators are employed within trade groups and these encompass sub trades representing a distinct occupation: for example, Trade Group 4 is responsible for telecommunications and information systems. This is subdivided into two sub trades of Information Communication and Technology Technicians, and Communication Infrastructure Technicians. Enlisted aviators must currently remain within the trade they joined. This lack of workforce flexibility is limiting from a career development perspective.
A new approach to RAF career management
Programme professions will transition the RAF from a structure of 80 branches and trades to 11 distinct professions, each being supported by a comprehensive skills framework. This will facilitate a new approach to career management within the armed forces. For the cyberspace profession, this transformation programme also represents a further opportunity to be recognised as a standalone capability in the RAF.
To further professionalise, it was decided that an industry standard framework should be adopted into the new cyberspace profession framework where possible. Primarily the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) was used as the backbone, but was also supported by several other frameworks such as the Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework and the Mast and Tower Safety Framework, to capture the broad range of skills within the profession.
The RAF cyberspace profession: scope and ambition
The RAF cyberspace profession is dedicated to building, operating, managing and defending critical digital and technological capabilities and infrastructure. The profession encompasses a wide range of responsibilities, including radar maintenance, coding, network infrastructure and cybersecurity. Given the profession's diverse nature, developing a skills framework to cover the breadth of these activities was a monumental task.
To tackle this, the Cyberspace Profession Implementation Team (CPIT) was established in October 2023. The team was tasked with creating and implementing a skills framework for the cyberspace profession and set a compressed timeline of nine months to meet the ambitious targets set by the overarching professions programme. Aligning to SFIA and other industry frameworks was crucial for meeting such a strict timeframe, as the team were able to leverage a globally recognised model for describing skills, significantly expediting the project by accelerating the skill authoring process.
A novel approach to framework development
The initial step in creating the framework involved defining all roles within the cyberspace profession through the creation of generic role profiles. These profiles outlined in detail the responsibilities of individuals employed within various similar roles and were initially validated internally by the team. Once the generic roles had passed the initial round of internal validation, these profiles were then sent to numerous job role owners around the professions for further validation from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) identified as working within those environments.
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Innovation played a crucial role in meeting the nine month timeframe. The CPIT exploited opportunities in emerging technology to expedite the work and used generative AI to develop both the generic role profiles and skill standards, starting with seed data from the role descriptions and biasing the AI towards the SFIA framework. Human intervention was crucial to validate the AI generated skill profiles and several workshops were held to undertake this, paving the way to building a model of how the future profession would work. This approach also provided additional insights into the current skill sets within the cyberspace profession.
Creating and validating skill standards
Following the creation of generic role profiles the team authored the skill standards, detailing the key knowledge, skillset, experience and behaviour required at each of the proficiency levels. While generative AI produced initial drafts, for the role profiles further refinement was necessary. The CPIT conducted months of validation events with SMEs working on the RAF's front lines. This ensured the skill standards were accurate and relevant for those areas for which they were written.
Mapping positions and individuals
The next task involved mapping positions to the framework, a process again undertaken in collaboration with SMEs currently working within the cyberspace profession. Job role owners mapped roles according to the generic profiles, ensuring real world responsibilities were aligned with the new skills framework. Additionally, a self-assessment tool was developed to allow all individuals within the profession to map themselves to the framework. A project was undertaken to map technical training to the SFIA framework to allow a greater understanding of what skills were acquired at various points in a service person’s career.
Early successes and benefits
Although the framework is still in its infancy, the alignment with SFIA has already yielded significant benefits for the cyberspace profession:
- Lateral entry: by aligning with a global framework, the RAF can now articulate skill crossovers clearly, enabling lateral moves within the RAF and with civilian counterparts. This clarity has facilitated bespoke training pathways based on identified skill gaps, reducing training time and enhancing service effectiveness. Additionally, the use of SFIA has provided further utility with the recruitment and employment of reserve forces
- Professionalisation: the SFIA backbone has enabled the creation of pathways to professional registration, making it easier to provide Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for personnel and making professional registration more accessible. This aids in fostering a more motivated and professional workforce
- Talent management: objective skill measurement offers a clearer picture of talent distribution. As the RAF adopts a skill based career management model, identifying and appropriately employing talented individuals becomes more efficient
- Transferable skills: formal recording of skill progression ensures personnel can articulate their capabilities in universally understood terms, aiding their employability in the wider sector. This also serves as a recruitment tool, showcasing the breadth of opportunities in a cyberspace career.
Conclusion
The RAF's innovative approach has resulted in a comprehensive and robust strategy for delivering a skill-based profession model within just nine months. The early benefits of aligning with SFIA underscore the framework's potential to enhance organisational effectiveness. The RAF's experience demonstrates the value of adopting a skills framework, offering valuable insights for organisations of all sizes aiming to future proof their workforce in an ever evolving digital landscape.
The RAF's journey in building a future ready workforce through an innovative approach to creating a digital skills framework stands as a testament to the importance of adaptability and strategic planning in the face of rapid technological advancements. The professions programme not only strengthens the RAF’s operational capabilities but also sets a benchmark for other organisations seeking to navigate the complexities of the digital age.
