Defence is the only body in this database that is simultaneously the customer, the regulator and the approver of its own supply chain. It sets the security requirements a supplier must meet, vets the supplier's people through Australian Government Security Vetting Agency, writes the contract template, runs the tender, and evaluates it.

That concentration is deliberate and largely unavoidable — the alternative is an outside body making judgements about classified capability — but it removes almost every external discipline this database usually relies on. There is no statutory clock on any step. There is no appeal on the merits. There is no published elapsed time per gate. A supplier who thinks a process took too long has no forum in which to say so.

Reform is underway and is substantial. The Defence Delivery Agency will consolidate CASG, the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Group and the Naval Shipbuilding and Sustainment Group into a single delivery authority from 1 July 2027, with the implementation plan set out in the Rebuilding Defence Capability report of 2 July 2026. The ANAO has separately found that Capability Life Cycle governance arrangements were not implemented effectively and that there was a lack of clarity about the purpose of and relationship between the various decision-making forums.

An organisational merger is a real answer to that finding. It is worth recording that it is also the answer least likely to be measurable: consolidating three groups into one changes who decides, and this database can only see how long deciding takes.