Definitions
Independent members are recognised specialists and experts in science, engineering, technology, or medicine who are appointed to provide independent advice to the Secretary of State for Defence. None work in MOD or its agencies, and their main employer is usually academia, industry, or the NHS/Department of Health.
The other type of member is an official member. These are staff from MOD or Dstl (or occasionally another Government Department) whose main role is to provide the information about MOD and Dstl, and their activities, which the independents need to generate relevant advice.
What is Meant by Independence?
Independent members are appointed in a personal capacity, because of their individual knowledge and expertise. They are not appointed because of any job or position, which they hold.
Their advice should reflect the personal nature of their appointment: it should be based on their personal views, as experts, of what is best for the MOD. Their advice should not represent the interests of their employers or any other organisation.
An attempt by an independent member to use his or her position to lobby for his employer's interest could damage DSAC's reputation for independence, and thereby weaken its effectiveness.
MOD regards DSAC and ISTA members as their trusted advisers and provides information to DSAC which it does not release to a wider industrial and academic audience. As a corollary, MOD expects them members to remember that they are appointed in a personal capacity, and to recognise that all information is released to them as individuals, not as representatives of their employers. In consequence, information given to DSAC and its members should not be passed on to anyone not in MOD or its agencies, DSAC or on the ISTA register.
The DSAC Chairman will treat any reported breach of this confidence extremely seriously, and will expect the member concerned to resign from DSAC and the register.
Roles of Independents, and the Nature and Status of their Advice
The role of the independent members is to generate advice, by combining their own specialist knowledge and experience with information provided by officials on MOD's policies, plans, priorities, programmes, procedures, problems and the "politics" associated with the issues being addressed.
Their advice will, in most cases, take the form of recommendations produced by working parties set up to address a particular issue or by joint DSAC/MOD Audits. Working party reports have to be endorsed by Council before being passed to MOD.
Formally, DSAC advises the Secretary of State for Defence, and the DSAC Chairman reports DSAC's key recommendations to him. However, most of DSAC's detailed recommendations are sent directly to the customers for MOD's research programme, and MOD's response comes back from them.
A proportion of DSAC's activities are carried out at the specific request of MOD's Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA). Advice produced by these working parties does not constitute advice to Ministers, and so it may, in some cases, with the permission of CSA, be possible for their reports to be circulated outside Government. (CSA may of course also use them as the basis of his advice to Ministers.)
DSAC's principal role is to advise the MOD research customer, not the scientists in Dstl or other suppliers carrying out the research. However, much of DSAC's advice will be generated following contact with such scientists, and all involved recognise the value to the suppliers of research of such contacts. However, advising suppliers on the scientific issues involved in a part of the research programme should not become the principal activity of any DSAC working party.
DSAC's role is to advise on the scope, content, health, and balance of MOD's scientific activities. MOD should not use DSAC as consultants to solve specific technical problems, or to deal with issues which should properly be addressed by officials. The distinction between advice and consultancy is at times a fine one, but any independent member, or working party, who feels that they are being asked by MOD or Dstl to carry out activities which should more properly be done by consultants from the commercial sector should not hesitate to raise their concerns with the DSAC Secretary or Executive Officer.
DSAC is an advisory body. It has no executive function or authority within MOD. The style and tone of its reports and recommendations should reflect its status as a high-level advisory group