How Thales partnership in Ebbw Vale is flourishing

5 May, 2021

The University of South Wales (USW), Welsh Government and global technology company Thales announced at the start of 2019 the establishment of the £20m National Digital Exploitation Centre (NDEC), based in Ebbw Vale.

It was the first research and development facility of its kind in Wales, and has provided SMEs and microbusinesses with a base to test and develop their digital concepts.

Later in 2019, Holly Lidbury became NDEC’s Education Lead, supporting the Centre’s aim to help provide job opportunities across South East Wales through digital training and research.

Holly, and Gareth Williams, Thales’ VP Secure Communications and Information Systems, have explained how the NDEC has developed during its foundation years.

GW: One of the cornerstones of the strategic partnership was to create something together in Wales. We were conscious that USW was a more industry-centric and vocational type University, and was the sort of thing that we were after.

I found, the USW Vice-Chancellor Professor, Julie Lydon an individual who showed we could do more together. That was the reason why we got involved in the partnership.

If you look at what we have delivered between us, in the creation of the NDEC in Ebbw Vale, the launch of the education programme that Holly leads, the launch of the PhDs, and the research agenda - as well as some of the spin-off conversations we’re already having with USW, where we’re more joined up with our research and technology team at a UK-level - they have been really successful to date.

We’ve also been lucky enough to have USW graduates join us - I’ve got one who works for me in Reading – and through the NDEC programme, I’ve seen that pathway beginning to come alive.

I think in the years we have been in partnership, we have moved forward significantly.

How do you find the base in Ebbw Vale works for the partnership?

GW: The collaboration programme and the partnership drove us to that location. When you reflect on the location, and think about the mission for Tech Valleys, and what they’re trying to achieve, where it sits in relation to the Midlands, and the investment that’s going in there from road infrastructure, it works. If they can connect it to London, then I think that would make a huge difference.

If you look at the mission, both from a Thales perspective in building new capability that we didn’t have in the UK, the Welsh Government’s desire to create new career paths, and USW to inject its education programme into that area, it make a whole load of sense.

HL: When I first understood that they were making this Centre in Ebbw Vale, I completely got it and I am completely behind it. The proof of the pudding is that it is starting to have that impact, and I feel really lucky to work on something that could have an impact on economic regeneration in the area.

It would be nice to see in 20 years’ time if all the desired impact happen. The idea is great, and the idea behind it makes a lot of sense.

What impact has the NDEC had on the area?

HL: Outside of the education impact it’s even things like the fact we have people from the local area working in the NDEC. Even I’m an example of that. I was very close to moving to London because the sort of jobs that I wanted to do, I didn’t have access to in Wales. This centre has created that there.

We’ve got lots of employees from the local area who are now working within a hi-tech industry, as opposed to the public sector, which we probably all would have been.

Within the education project, it’s the links that it creates for the people. We’ll probably see this further down the line with the students that we work with.

We did one project with a community group called Go Connect, which was a small-scale project over six weeks, for people who were not in education, employment, or training, but had digital skills and an interest. One of the people who came along to that project, was unemployed for quite some time but had some experience in the digital sector, and through the relationship with us and through events, we got in touch with some cyber SMEs and used it as an opportunity to promote job role within the organisations, and he gained employment out of that. He’s from Blaenau Gwent and is now working for an up-and-coming cyber security company, and that was directly through the fact that the NDEC is in Ebbw Vale and he was associated with that community group. It’s a tangible example of the benefit of the NDEC.

What do you see as the future of the partnership?

GW: I see it in a couple of areas. The kind of ground-breaking work that Holly has done in the education area, I can see how that it repeatable and expandable across Wales.

I was talking to an organisation about how effective it can be from a levelling up perspective across other parts of the UK.

I see that very much as some ground-breaking work that we have done, that can replicated and expand. I see that going further.

I think the links with academia is so important in boosting cyber research, and the particular flavour of cyber that we are doing in the NDEC, is developed in the UK, and the UK can become a centre for that. We’ve seen that with Thales already, where the company has decided that the NDEC is the centre for our OT (operational technology) competence globally.

Thales has made the first step, but you’ve got to keep that research agenda going and keep looking at the next thing. So I can see that doing more.

I think with the augmentation of the NDEC with the ResilientWorks announcement, I can see us almost being an anchor, where other companies will start to build around us. Hopefully you will begin to create an industrial eco-system, because Thales is there and we have capability, and people will want to use it, and it’s also making Ebbw Vale more credible as the home for that.

Where you had start-up that were thinking they had to go to Cardiff or Newport, I’d like to think, if they’ve got a certain need for testing, or skills, or research, they may think about Ebbw Vale now.

How is the project supporting the ambition of increasing diversity in STEM?

HL: With the NDEC, I can see that it’s a positive work environment for women. There has been a conscious effort to maintain the number of women who work there.

We do a lot of specific interventions to increase diversity within the education project. We can focus our attention on the early intervention. People always talk about the leaky pipeline when they talk about the diversity with STEM subject, and realistically you need to get there before age 11.

Companies won’t do that on their own, especially if it only makes financial sense to focus recruitment on 16-plus.

So what this has allowed us to do is effective, research-driven, intervention, where we can actually target those age groups.

We have worked with the Brownies girls as young as five to seven, to start helping them to consider those things. We work quite closely with the Cyber First programme, the Cyber First Girls competition, and we’re developing more things around that. We also did an event for International Women’s Day for girls 14-plus.

One of the things I’ve found, is it’s not that girls don’t think they can’t do it, they’re not being told they can’t do STEM, but they can feel lonely in their interest because there’s not many girls doing it, and they can find it difficult to reconcile their interest in STEM with their other interests and talents. As women, we’ve got skills in communication and are drawn to humanities subjects.

What we’re doing now, because we’ve had the time and freedom to be able to identify that, we can drive targeted interventions towards that.

After the International Women’s day event, we were able to create a Young Women in Cyber group. So girls from all over the UK, 14-plus, who have this common interest, are able to get together and not feel lonely.

We are doing a lot, and I always say that, with cyber security, diversity is not for its own sake, we need to be making sure that there is as many different people, with as many different ways of thinking, as possible in this industry,

GW: We need that level of diversity in cyber because the threat is ever pervasive, and becomes more advanced. So if you don’t have full representation of the spectrum of thinking, you’re never going to be able to have a truly robust cyber defence.

When you talk to the Government’s National Cyber Security Centre about this, it’s obviously very important to them, that you get the diversity of views and methodologies. I think it’s essential.

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