"I spoke to a group of systems integrators recently and told them, 'you think you're competing against each other? You are competing against [the App Store]'," he said.

"Why would someone spend 12 months working through with you, at enormous expense then take another year or two years to deliver an application at millions and millions of dollars when I can go to the App Store and pull down an application for $10.

"That is the environment people expect and you cannot stop them using it. They are doing it at home so they will do it at work."

Farr said he did anticipate some push back from within Defence to the idea, largely around the issue of IT security. However, he said that while security was valid concern, risk had to be balanced against business reward.

"I think security is sometimes overblown a bit. We take a purist view without actually doing a business-benefit-security trade-off. People, rightly, get nervous around ICT security, but people used to steal letters out of letter boxes on the past that didn't stop us using the post.