Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/139409
Transformation T Central to the whole piece, though, this is clearly meant to be a metrics, key performance indicator-based exercise so that we can benchmark ourselves against industry best practices or other militaries. Q The term "contractor" has a lot of negative connotations Q How does this relate to the work of General Leslie? Are you I cut my teeth in the Material Group where contracted support was central to doing the business – it's a fact of life. And there's a lot of expertise out there. We're not focused on contractors, but we may have a serious look at how we contract. Are there better ways to do strategic sourcing, as separate and distinct from a focus on contractors? There are no targets. We are going to look and scratch and sniff through the metrics to understand what we can do to improve, but we are not going to say, "we are going to reduce this by five percent or we're going to take the number of contractors down from X to Y." It's not a target-driven exercise. As soon as you talk about targets, it really impedes the ability to change culture; it's "give me my target and go away." And that's not a long-term game. This is meant to put Defence on a solid business footing for the long-term. building on the foundation he laid? As we looked at overhead inefficiencies and the value streams across the department, we drew on some of the initiatives that had already been put in place. We looked at the transformation report of General Leslie and we are also being helped by the consulting firm of McKinsey. They have done a lot of work in this area with other militaries, including the U.K. and Israel, and the results of their enabled work in the U.K. was lauded by the National Audit Office, their Auditor General equivalent. We took McKinsey's work, initiatives that were already progress in some fashion, and General Leslie's report, and distilled that down to 23 initiatives that we will now move out on. Some of those initiatives had their birth in the Leslie report. Q Can you provide some examples of those 23? When I say cross-cutting value streams, it's really some of those enabling functions that contribute to operational capability and operational readiness: materiel management, infrastructure, IM/ IT, the personnel and training system, pieces that often transcend the traditional stovepipes that you might envision that any large organization has. Q How far are you into this process? At the moment we are in an analytical phase and we've been doing that since February. That will lead to a charter and an implementation plan being generated between now and the end of June. And that charter and implementation plan will drive renewal going forward. At the moment the DRT is in a data capture, analysis, and charter generation mode and we will look to take these 23 initiatives and do that proverbial handshake with the various level one leadership in the department who will then lead implementation. We will become a facilitating, maybe a reporting function, but it will be levelone led going forward. In fairness, a DRT of 20 people is not going to have the horsepower to lead the type of transformative effort required to change an $18 billion enterprise. But we have a real ability to harness the data, analyze it, compile it, shape it and ask some challenging questions, and then enable the initiatives going forward. Q Given the greater emphasis on joint operations, are you seeking to consolidate functions in a way that is more "joint"? I'd replace "joint" with "more efficient." If that means more joint, great. But it's really meant to be an efficiency exercise. Are there opportunities for greater synergy and less duplication and more efficient ways of doing business without removing responsiveness or agility or support to operations? Part of it is looking at those areas where we spend the most money like IM/IT and infrastructure. around it these days, yet they are important to what you do. Are you looking at how much the CF needs to own and how much can be contracted out? Q Are you looking then for technology to drive some of these efficiencies? In trying to change the culture, part of this is about embracing innovation and looking at how technology can enable us, and it is acknowledged that there may be some investment required. What might the future look like and what could we put in place to enable that? Are there business system enhancements that we might be able to do to have MASIS (Materiel Acquisition and Support Information System) and DRMIS (Defence Resource Management Information System) better share information as an innovative way forward. The Military Personnel Management Capability Transformation project is a technology-enabled solution to better manage military personnel and their pay systems. Q General Lawson has noted that the procurement process is ripe for renewal. Is this part of your scope or are you waiting for the work that is being done around the Jenkins report? I would split the contracting piece into two areas, that which we might control autonomously internally and that for which we may want to get together with other stakeholders. At the moment we are focused on what levers we have internally. What are best practices out there, what are some of the lessons learned from McKinsey and others related to contracting that we could get our arms around? Let's be able to prove that our house is in order before we look beyond our own walls. That brings me to the issue of metrics. In my opinion, we don't necessarily have a culture of performance measurement and so part of this is to generate the metrics to be able to prove to ourselves and others that we are efficient. At the Pentagon, I saw a wonderful quote on the wall that sums up this metrics piece: "In God we trust, all others must bring data." It forces people to come to the table and welcome the challenge function. And that ultimately speaks to the need to drive a culture of openness and transparency that would bleed across the various stovepipes. www.vanguardcanada.com JUNE/JULY 2013 27