DASA was launched in conjunction with the Defence Innovation Initiative in Glasgow by MinDP. Having evolved from CDE, DASA was given the remit to find and fund exploitable innovations in order to give government departments any advantage it can to protect the country from its adversaries.

By running competitions and collaborating with industry and academia, we help to rapidly develop innovative solutions to the most pressing national security or defence challenges.

Here are some of our highlights from the past year.

We’ve invested

We’ve assessed over 715 proposals, funded 147 projects and invested £17.3m in innovative ideas that will support our front line services. We’ve launched 8 new competitions this year and are managing a further 7 on behalf of our customers who include The Home Office, Department of Transport, MOD and Dstl.

The majority of proposals and funding goes to UK businesses, but we do accept international applications. Around 75% of funding has been allocated to industry and we believe by investing in grass roots innovation we help to stimulate the UK economy.

We provide access

We pride ourselves in being accessible and easy to work with. This year we’ve delivered 18 Accelerator competition events and held 100+ face to face meetings around the country to support innovation proposals.
Our Innovation Network Events offer potential suppliers the opportunity to hear and talk directly to the customer, technical, security and defence experts as well as the DASA team.

We’ve exhibited, presented and attended at 4 major exhibitions including DSEI, DPTRE, Innovate and UK Security Expo. Our innovation partners have also visited numerous conferences, symposiums and meetings around the country to promote our services.

We’re trying new things

Our offer is growing and we accept proposals from anyone with a good idea, at any level of development with an exploitation pathway.

To facilitate this we’re trying new things and have piloted new approaches to make it quicker and easier for innovators to access our service including the Open Call for Innovation One Page Pitch, short form contracts, multi technology readiness level proposals, hackathons, sandpits and symposiums.

These new trials have proven very popular. For example, we launched the One Page Pitch, where an innovation summary is submitted and assessed within a fortnight, at DSEI in September. In just 10 weeks, we received 199 proposals and 60% were asked to submit a full proposal to the Open Call for Innovation.

We’re agile

One of our key aims is to help innovators bridge the innovation gap and see great ideas become real solutions. Several of our new themed competitions this year offered a new fast track approach.

Our new operating model helped us to respond quickly to the UK terrorist attacks this summer. We scoped and launched our Improving Crowd Resilience competition in just 8 weeks.

We support

We have a network of 750 cross government experts who support our competitions. This year we have recruited and trained over 280 new assessors.

Our core team has doubled and from January our Innovation Partners will be based regionally so that suppliers won’t have to travel far to get support.

We also have an exploitation team which actively look for routes to market to help innovations become a reality.

We’re open to new ideas

We fund the best ideas – with 58% of funding allocated to SMEs and micro organisations. Moreover 40% of those funded have never applied to us before. Our attractive terms and conditions, include:

• 100% ownership of IP
• 100% funding (no match funding required)
• a quick decision process
• short form contracts
• access to exploitation routes

We are still evolving.

To keep up to date with new competitions, events and exhibitions please subscribe to our twitter, LinkedIn or website alerts.

The Government is undertaking an assessment of the impact of the voluntary industry measures introduced in November 2015 to improve the transparency of connected party pre-pack sales in administration and will be contacting a variety of interested parties to seek their views.

The industry measures arose from the recommendations of the 2014 independent Graham Review, which found that pre-pack sales were a useful business rescue tool, but that there was evidence of less successful outcomes where the pre-pack sale was to a connected party.

As well as industry reforms, the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 created a power for Government to make regulations to impose conditions on property sales to connected parties in administration (including via a pre-pack). This power expires in May 2020.

The assessment will look at the impact of reforms on all connected party sales in administration and will help to inform decisions on whether further regulation is needed prior to the expiration of the regulation making power.

The Home Office will today begin seeking the views of interested parties as part of the air weapons review in England and Wales, announced by the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, Nick Hurd. The review was announced in October following a recommendation by Her Majesty’s Senior Coroner for Suffolk, Dr Peter Dean, who wrote to the Home Office requesting a review after the death of Benjamin Wragge, aged 13, who was accidently shot by an air weapon.

The review will seek feedback on whether existing controls are sufficient to prevent children getting hold of air weapons and the potential for placing extra requirements on adults regarding the security of air weapons when children are present.

The review will also ask for views on:

• the storage and safe-keeping of air weapons, including possible requirements for increased security e.g. trigger locks or locked cabinets
• whether further measures are needed on manufacturing standards to prevent accidental discharge of air weapons or to prevent modification of air weapons post-sale in order to increase their power; and
• evidence from Scotland and Northern Ireland, where air weapons are subject to a licensing regime

The Home Office is writing to a number of families who have raised the issue of air weapon legislation with their MPs as well as police forces and relevant charities and representative bodies such as the RSPCA, the Gun Control Network, the British Shooting Sports Council and the Gun Trade Association.

These interested parties and members of the public can share evidence on the topics in the review by 6 February 2017 and write to firearmsconsultations@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.

The Foreign Ministers of the UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia, with senior officials of the US Government, met on 10 December in Abu Dhabi to discuss the concerning situation in Yemen.

They expressed outrage at reports of indiscriminate killings and intimidation by the Houthis in Sana’a, including against members of the GPC and their families. They called upon the Houthis to cease actions to suppress or eliminate other political parties in Sana’a.

In the context of a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, the members discussed means of providing greater assistance to the Yemeni people, and facilitating the entry of humanitarian and commercial goods. The members agreed to enhance their efforts to prevent weapons smuggling into Yemen.

The members urged all Yemeni parties to unify their efforts in search of responsible solutions for a stable and united Yemen.

They agreed to meet frequently to monitor this concerning situation.