{"id":11603,"date":"2014-01-10T06:00:54","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T19:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=11603"},"modified":"2014-01-13T08:54:41","modified_gmt":"2014-01-12T21:54:41","slug":"weighing-above-our-punch-in-defence-of-the-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/weighing-above-our-punch-in-defence-of-the-department\/","title":{"rendered":"Weighing above our punch? In defence of the Department"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, in the early 1970s, the Departments of Defence, Navy, Army, Air Force and Supply employed over 51,000 civilians<\/a> to support 122,000 military members (comprising 81,000 permanent ADF, 26,000 reservists, 12,000 National Servicemen, and 3,000 PNGDF).<\/p>\n

Numbers fell over the next three decades<\/a> as the five departments amalgamated; computers displaced clerical workers; construction and maintenance of military equipment were privatised to defence industry; support services, such as on-base catering, were rationalised and out-sourced; shared service arrangements were introduced to provide information technology, human resources and other administrative support across the department; and we moved to a Defence of Australia posture. Civilian staffing bottomed-out at around 16,000 in 2001\u201302, before starting to rise again, reaching 22,860 ongoing Australian Public Servants<\/a> by mid-2012. Currently there are slightly fewer than 20,640 permanent APS employees<\/a> (15,200 in the Department and 5,440 in DMO) compared to 80,840 ADF personnel (56,060 regulars and 24,780 reservists).<\/p>\n

At first glance, it\u2019s surprising Defence\u2019s civilian workforce is larger than the Navy, RAAF, or NSW Police<\/a>, prompting calls to trim the \u2018bloated Defence bureaucracy<\/a>\u2019, move funds from \u2018tail-to-teeth<\/a>\u2019, or give every \u2018pen pusher and bean counter<\/a>\u2019 a rifle\u2014thanks Dad! (Disclosure: the author is on leave from the Department.) Personnel costs have reached 42% of defence spending<\/a> versus 35% operating costs and just 22% on equipment. A third each is traditionally considered organisationally healthier.<\/p>\n

One of the Coalition\u2019s 11 pre-election defence priorities<\/a> was to reinvest resources from \u2018the huge Defence bureaucracy\u2019 in capability. Minister Johnston describes overstaffing as an ingredient of the \u2018unsustainable mess<\/a>\u2019 he inherited, noting the DMO\u2019s UK counterpart has been cut from 29,000 to 16,000 staff. Although the aspiration to increase defence spending to 2% of GDP within a decade was upgraded to a commitment just before the election, signs we face a decade of deficits<\/a> may delay<\/a> that avenue for increasing spending on equipment. The Commission of Audit<\/a> is expected to include high-level recommendations to trim Defence, and a first-principles review<\/a> will offer detailed suggestions to improve departmental processes and structure, ahead of the 2014 Budget and 2015 white paper.<\/p>\n

But where are all these Defence public servants? And what do they do; are they really multiplying; and would targeting them yield lucrative savings? Answers to these questions could help ensure changes maximise efficiency and effectiveness while minimising organisational risk.<\/p>\n

A popular image of hordes of over-promoted, self-serving, desk-jockeys rattling around Russell Hill\u2019s \u2018fort fumble<\/a>\u2019 fits a \u2018lazy narrative<\/a>\u2019, whereby every defence bungle is attributed to an agency that can barely count its paperclips. In fact, the Department\u2019s composition, duties, and capabilities are far more complex. Staff perform a wide range of tasks in every state, territory, and overseas (click to enlarge tables):<\/p>\n

\"Defence<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Defence<\/a><\/p>\n

While the largest single blocks shown above do work in policy, materiel and administrative roles in Canberra (security and intelligence roles are concentrated there too) they don\u2019t comprise a majority of positions. And where administrative roles, such as inputting data or providing customer service to ADF clients, remain in the Department, it\u2019s generally because reviews have assessed out-sourcing these functions would be more expensive and increase performance or reputation risks (the SAS pay scandal<\/a> comes to mind).<\/p>\n

Suggestions that the department expanded out of control merely due to an indulgence of bureaucracy\u2019s inexorable drive to grow (Parkinson\u2019s law<\/a>) during the post-East Timor \/ 9-11 \u2018national security decade\u2019 don\u2019t fully stack-up either (click to enlarge graph):<\/p>\n

\"Numbers<\/a><\/p>\n

(Sources: ASPI, Defence Almanac 2011-12; Commonwealth of Australia, Defence Annual Report 2012-13; Commonwealth of Australia, PBS 2013-14 Defence Portfolio)<\/p>\n

Around 1,000 of the approximately 4,000 more civilians on the books now than a decade ago are former military positions civilianised \u2018to ensure that uniformed personnel aren\u2019t doing jobs which can be performed equally by civilians at lower cos<\/a>t\u2019. (Military members are 30% costlier on average, and more expensive than that at mid to higher levels.) Under its combined APS\u2013ADF\u2013contractor model, DMO can employ additional civilians (currently about 350) to backfill positions unable to be staffed by appropriately skilled and experienced ADF members. Smaller numbers are former contractors, such as medical experts, whose services turned out to be costlier and less successful when outsourced; staff reassigned from other agencies for security vetting roles transferred to Defence; and a handful of specialists engaged for ADF operations.<\/p>\n

The majority of additional positions, though, relate to efforts toward the introduction of improved capabilities slated in the 2000, 2009 and 2013 white papers<\/a>\u2014especially the 2009 edition\u2019s ambitious Force 2030 plan (with six additional large subs retained in the latest version)\u2014combined with the APS\u2019s closer integration into a more joint Defence Organisation.<\/p>\n

In that context, Defence\u2019s impulse to maintain existing activities when it takes on new duties stems more from a commitment to excel at tasks that seem important to those performing them<\/a> (and government\u2019s aversion to saying stop doing this when it says start doing that) than some malevolent APS urge to swamp and stymie ADF colleagues<\/a>. Rank creep exists in Defence, as in other agencies: its Senior Executive Service (SES) cohort grew by 63%<\/a> and Executive Level staff increased 104% from 2000\u201313. But with less than 1% SES, 32% EL1\/2 middle-managers and 68% other APS, it\u2019s unclear Defence has the \u2018too many chiefs and not enough Indians\u2019 of popular imagination to manage strategic complexity, 180 major equipment projects<\/a> worth $150 billion and one of Australia\u2019s largest workforces. (To the extent its management is \u2018top-heavy\u2019, the proliferation of Deputy Secretaries\u201413 now\u2014seems more to blame than average classification levels. Each new Group produces \u2018cascading hierarchies<\/a>\u2019 of staff and interests\u2014blurring accountabilities, exacerbating \u2018fiefdoms<\/a>\u2019, and generating internal paperwork.)<\/p>\n

All this isn\u2019t to suggest Defence\u2019s civilians shouldn\u2019t help rein-in spending. They\u2019re already taking job cuts to deliver the previous government\u2019s efficiency dividend<\/a> and will be asked to do more. Nor would merely \u2018salami slicing\u2019 small numbers of bureaucrats achieve large savings. Yet given their contribution to capability\u2014they no longer merely provide \u2018back-end<\/a>\u2019 support to an ADF \u2018front-end\u2019\u2014declaring open season on Defence\u2019s civilian workforce, for example by halving it to save $1.1 billion annually<\/a> (12,500 troops would also have to go to restore investment in equipment to a third of spending) could prove counterproductive. ASPI colleagues have proposed a range of organisational<\/a>, output-focused<\/a>, force-structure<\/a>, commercial\/industry<\/a> and other strategies to wield the scalpel more surgically. Achieving lasting efficiencies and better performance will take more than just slashing staff.<\/p>\n

Karl Claxton is an analyst at ASPI.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, in the early 1970s, the Departments of Defence, Navy, Army, Air Force and Supply employed over 51,000 civilians to support 122,000 military members (comprising 81,000 permanent ADF, 26,000 reservists, 12,000 National …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":11608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[120,38,136],"class_list":["post-11603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-budget","tag-department-of-defence","tag-workforce"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWeighing above our punch? 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