Shaping a new Defence: Help us get Defence right

The Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Defence believe that members of the Armed Forces and their families, and the MOD's civilian staff, have an important contribution to make to the Strategic Defence and Security Review. This is your opportunity to say what you think, as someone who knows Defence from the inside.

The Secretary of State has set out that the Review must challenge existing ideas, and think clearly about what the country needs from the armed forces and what we can afford within a smaller defence budget. It must provide a step change, not salami-slicing, to bring defence policy, plans, commitments and resources into balance, confront the harsh facts of the economic climate and make a clean break from the military and political mindset of cold war politics:

• The Armed Forces must be reconfigured to meet the needs of the evolving security environment and satisfy the expectations of this country;



• The Ministry of Defence must face wide-ranging reform;



• There must be major reform of our procurement practices;



• Defence must be affordable.

Your idea

If you have any ideas, suggestions or comments that you think could help with any of this then we want you to share them with us. It could be something you've been thinking about for a while, an idea you've had recently, or something you've worked up with your friends and colleagues. Your idea could be small-scale, but quick and easy to put into action. It could be more radical, involving significant changes to how Defence works. It can be about doing things better (or not at all), organising ourselves differently, saving money. Whatever it is, please be as specific as you can.

Your ideas will be anonymous. We do need to ask for a few pieces of general background information about you to help us analyse the results, but we can't identify who you are from them, and they won't be made available to the team looking at your ideas. Individual ideas won't appear online, but every submission will be looked at in the way set out in the 'What happens next' section below. The survey will be open until 31 July 2010.

This survey is hosted on the Internet and only UNCLASSIFIED information should be entered

Shaping a new Defence survey link

What happens next?

As each idea comes in it will be reviewed and fed into the wider Strategic Defence and Security Review process. The steps are as follows:

1. Every idea will be read and considered by a team working for the MOD Strategy Unit that is leading the Defence input to the SDSR;



2. Ideas they think have potential will be passed out across the Department to be worked up and included in plans as appropriate;



3. Ministers will receive an initial summary of key themes and any particularly promising ideas in August, and a more detailed analysis in early September;



4. We will publish a report in the autumn as part of the process of setting out the conclusions of the Strategic Defence and Security Review. This will summarise what we received and what has been done with the ideas and suggestions.