Recognition
The weak signals, context and patterns an experienced person notices before a situation becomes obvious.
Defence Legacy
Service experience should not leave when people do.
Legacy gives transitioning servicemen and women a safe, voluntary way to turn authorised learned and lived experience into evidence that can teach, test and improve AI systems—while they become veterans, and long after their final posting.
For Special Forces and TOP SECRET material, the complete capture, model and review loop can operate inside a customer-controlled, accredited environment. Classified data does not enter the public DataM8 service.
WHAT IS TRANSFERRED
The reasoning around a decision—not a copy of a person
Legacy captures bounded examples of professional judgement. Those examples can become evaluation cases, retrieval material or supervised corrections. They do not replace veterans, confer their authority on a model or make a system operationally ready by themselves.
Decision judgement
How competing priorities are weighed, when confidence is insufficient and when a decision must be escalated.
Communication
How language, timing and audience affect whether advice is understood and acted upon in a bounded scenario.
Safe limits
The conditions under which an AI system should defer, refuse, seek confirmation or hand authority back to a person.
TWO OPERATING MODES
The security domain changes. The evidence discipline does not.
Classification is not a feature toggle on the public platform. It determines where the entire system runs, who can enter it and how anything may leave.
Public and controlled pilot mode
Synthetic or explicitly releasable scenarios can use the managed DataM8 workflow for capture, calibration, evaluation and regression. This mode is suitable for discovery and proving the method; it must not receive classified information.
Closed-loop enclave mode
The application, approved local model, evidence store, identity controls and audit trail run wholly inside the sponsoring authority's security domain. There is no dependency on the public DataM8 service during classified operation.
Deployment is subject to the system owner's security plan, assessment and authorisation to operate. DataM8 does not claim that the public service is accredited for classified data.
CLOSED-LOOP ARCHITECTURE
Everything needed to capture, evaluate and improve stays inside
Isolated execution
Run the application and model inside the approved enclave, with outbound network access denied by default.
Local evidence plane
Store transcripts, scenarios, model outputs, rubrics and provenance only in customer-controlled storage.
Compartmented access
Enforce clearance, caveat, role and need-to-know rules, including protected identities and pseudonymous attribution.
No external telemetry
Disable public analytics, crash reporting, remote logging and third-party model or API calls in classified mode.
Controlled release
Treat every export as a deliberate review event; use an approved cross-domain process when information must change domains.
Accountable audit
Record access, model versions, approvals, corrections and exports in an enclave-local, reviewable audit trail.
THE LEGACY PATHWAY
A governed part of transition, from consent to model evidence
- 01
Agree the boundary
Define the role, approved subject matter, information classification, intended model use and material that must never be collected.
- 02
Elicit the judgement
Use structured interviews and decision walkthroughs to surface cues, trade-offs and escalation points inside the approved security domain and need-to-know boundary.
- 03
Turn it into evidence
Convert the contribution into reviewed examples, evaluation criteria, model corrections and explanations that retain their provenance.
- 04
Validate and govern
Have authorised reviewers approve, restrict or reject each artefact before it enters an evaluation suite, retrieval system or training workflow.
- 05
Keep the veteran involved
Record attribution and consent, invite the contributor to review material, and preserve a clear path to update or withdraw future use where applicable.
Safeguards before capture
A Legacy activity begins only after the sponsor defines the approved environment, information handling rules, contributor rights and the precise downstream use. Special Operations work additionally protects identity, unit, capability and relationship information through compartmented access and pseudonymous contribution records.
- No classified data in the public DataM8 service
- No cross-domain transfer without an approved release process
- No implication of Defence endorsement or veteran authority
- No reuse outside the agreed purpose and access boundary
- No model release without independent testing and accountable approval
Start with authority, classification and one role
Begin by naming the system owner, security domain, authorised purpose, participant cohort and release boundary. The first scenario can then be designed at the classification the environment is authorised to handle, producing a reviewed evidence pack without moving the source material outside that domain.
Design a controlled pilotSecurity design aligns to the Australian Government Information Security Manual and cross-domain guidance; authorisation remains with the responsible government authority.