Own-collaborate-access framework
The Own-Collaborate-Access (OCA) Framework
Own-collaborate-access (OCA) is a framework that was developed in the ‘2021 Integrated Review’ (UK HMG, 2021) aiming to create a unified vision across security, defence, development and foreign policy, with science and technology playing a significant role across each of these.
It was essentially developed to help guide strategic decisions about the sources of capabilities and resources required for emerging technology development and commercialisation. It suggests that there are capabilities that may be available domestically, and others that require international collaboration and/or access, or a mix of these. There are strategic choices that need to be made related to OCA including different options, risks and benefits.
The OCA framework helps assess whether emerging capabilities should be met by building capabilities domestically, collaborating with partners, or securing access through other means, each posing different benefits, costs, and risks.
The official definitions for own, collaborate, access are:
- "Own: where the UK has leadership and ownership of new developments, from discovery to large-scale manufacture and commercialisation. This will always involve elements of collaboration and access.
- Collaborate: where the UK can provide unique contributions that allow us to collaborate with others to achieve our goals.
- Access: where the UK will seek to acquire critical S&T from elsewhere, through options, deals and relationships."
The choice is dependent on the level of ownership and control required from a supply chain and national economic security, and defence point of view, but also on the foreseeable potential to develop these required capabilities based on current capabilities, and their economic and public value (including spillovers into the ecosystem in the form of complementary capabilities).
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