A changing world needs changing working partnership agreements, according to Mark Goldsack. the Director of the Department for International Trade Defence and Security Organisation (DIT DSO)

“The days of the old transactional sale have gone,” he explained. “What really matters to everybody these days is actually ending up in a partnership where you genuinely share, own, develop and understand what it is that you are taking on board as a capability. For us to be able to come here, talk to people face to face, cut under the skin of the requirements that they’re trying to satisfy, that’s what allows us to sharpen our solutions to their problems and, more often than not, share solutions because most of these problems are commonly shared.”

Different countries, same issues

Goldsack said issues with defence and security were often shared between different countries, but the question for the DIT DSO, was which governments and trade partners to work with to solve those issues together.

“I think what you’ve seen happen over the past 12 months is this reach out around the world as we’ve refreshed and gone over all of our standing agreements, created a vast basket of new ones but, most importantly in the defence and security sectors, has been the publication of the Defence and Security Industrial Strategy. That’s allowed us to take a holistic view of what we’re doing with our own defence industrial base and see it, if you like, as a capability in its own right and by being able to concentrate on it, we’re actually now able to work out proactively which bits we need to support for our own national security reasons. We’ve ended up with a solution that actually allows us to go after a partnership, a working arrangement, a solution, that is genuinely win-win for us and for the countries that we work with.”

 
 
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