Consultancy offering cyber and digital support to public sector clients has been picked for a deal of nearly two years covering the provision of ‘subject matter experts’ for defence projects

The Ministry of Defence has signed a multimillion-pound contract with a specialist supplier that has been retained to provide advice on the security and risk of projects focused on the use of technology and innovation.

In a newly published commercial notice, the department reveals that, on 20 May, it entered into an engagement with Guildford-based firm Actica Consulting. The deal is valued at £4m and is set to last for a period of a little under 22 months, before concluding at the end of March 2027.

During this time, the supplier will be tasked with providing expert input to ensure that digital and data initiatives across the defence and military sector are adequately assured. The contract notice adds that the MoD needed to put in place a commercial agreement to fulfil this requirement because, as it stands, the ministry does not possess the necessary skills itself.

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“Many innovation projects are technical/digital and require careful guidance to ensure emergent technologies and processes are developed with a sufficiently balanced approach to security,” the document adds. “Therefore, it has been recognised that innovation projects need to have their own subject matter experts in place to provide support on digital, security, cyberdefence, and risk elements of project management. Currently, this specialised support cannot be internally resourced or easily scaled to support the volume and demand of UK defence’s innovation portfolio.”

Online procurement records reveal that Actica has previously won 160 deals with public-sector organisations, including several other recent engagements with the MoD and its agencies, as well as contracts awarded this year by the likes of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Department for Education, and the Ministry of Justice.