Is the DDA a step forward?

A quick look at how the new Defence Delivery Agency may not deliver the expected benefits if Government simply repeats the errors of the DMO experience.

The recent announcement by the Australian Government to merge CASG, GWEO and NSSG to create the Defence Delivery Agency came as both a welcome and shock to me. Mike Kalms posted something yesterday that got me thinking further about this. I don’t post here often but this topic has got me energised to comment. I’m interested to see where and how this lands amongst the people who may read this. So first, the pleasing nature…

The DDA Positives

I have worried for many years about the value of putting ADF personnel into Program and Project Management positions, especially in those very large, very complex acquisition projects that in some cases span decades. The churn of ADF postings means you are introducing turbulence to the project every year. Not to take anything away from ADF personnel – I did 27 years in uniform all told and there are some extraordinarily talented people – but this type of work is NOT the bread and butter of our warfighters. Even our very capable operators, logisticians and engineers must accept this is not what the purpose of the training they receive. If the creation of a non-Defence DDA mean less reliance on ADF personnel, then that’s a good thing, in my opinion. ADF personal should be used for their operational knowledge, to have crucial input to capability design, option evaluation and test and evaluation activities.

The counter view is a question over the availability of quality civilian (APS or contacted) Program and Project Managers but that’s not for this paper.

Back in 2021/22, I also found myself wondering why Defence needed to establish shadow acquisition agencies (when CASG already existed) simply because they were complex or politically important acquisitions. I felt the same effects could be created under the CASG banner if certain elements of the culture changed…. But culture change is hard and organisational restructuring is easy and effective right?

BTW, Defence Digital Group exercises both Capability Manager and Delivery Agency roles. Since one of the benefits of this change was to consolidate acquisition agencies, I wonder if any thought was made to include Enterprise ICT delivery into the new DDA scope?

The Potential DDA Negatives

My concerns though revolve around something Mike pointed out in his piece, and some of the comments that came in response to his post. Anyone around Defence for longer than 10 years has seen the changes the Department makes to structures without shifting the needle on culture and performance. The same issues remain despite numerous organisational change efforts. On the surface, this announcement seems to be yet another organisational restructure. As pundits have already questioned, is this simply shuffling the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic?

For a long time, I have heard the rhetoric about improving the speed to decision/capability and the need to stop being fascinated by the exquisite. And this rhetoric has been accompanied by announcements of organisational changes and promises of doing better. So far, not a lot of needle movement by many of the typical measures of such intent. So, with the announcement of the DDA, I have concerns that the DDA will not only simply be another organisational restructure with little performance improvement – but it may set the Department back. Let me explain.

Under the DMO arrangements there came a recognition that the autonomy created by making the DMO a prescribed agency caused a disconnect from Defence, empowering the DMO to do what they felt was right with little deference back to the Capability Managers. This disconnection had the effect of disempowering the Capability Managers from overseeing the acquisition process to ensure the endstate capability aligned with both strategic capability intent and the operational demands of the warfighters. This eventually resulted in the dissolution of the DMO and creation of CASG back under CDF.

In recent years VCDF Group implemented a Capability Program Management approach. A major driver for this was a perceived, if not real, continued disconnect between the Services and CASG. The common phrase related to a deceased feline being tossed from Capability Manager to Acquisition and finally to the warfighter – with little to no continued/enduring oversight of the capability being acquired and introduced to service to ensure alignment with the strategic and capability intent.

I felt the Capability Program Management architecture was a step in the right direction. It didn’t change organisational structures – it did seek to look at the culture (the way things are done around here) to improve accountabilities through more integrated relationships between capability, acquisition and realisation agencies (amongst many other benefits). Case in point, it forced conversations between Capability Managers (staff) and CASG in the development of Capability Program Strategies and it opened the door for realisation agencies to engage with both Service HQs and CASG to help define detailed operational capabilities and functional performance from a joint/integrated force perspective based on directed capabilities (ie NOT platform focused but the ability to achieve directed operational outcomes).

Why is this a problem?

So, why does the DDA announcement concern me? Not only does it move the acquisition agency further away from the centre (VCDF and Service HQs), it has the very real potential to relearn the mistakes of the DMO by imposing organisational and accountability space between those establishing the demand (capability strategy) and the capability realisation (warfighters), and those deciding the capability to acquire and the subsequent management of the acquisition. Introducing space is fine, as long as there robust inter-agency linkages defined, managed and assured across all interested agencies. Positioning the delivery agency to deliver customer expectations (the customer being both the Capability Manager and the warfighters) is an essential element of success to this type of arrangement. Anything less will see a return to organisational drift away from what the ADGF needs to fight and what the DDA is willing to deliver.

I am interested in seeing the controls and assurance processes to be put in place between DDA and Defence needed to maintain the rightful Capability Manager oversight, to assure both the objective force and delivery of the future force. Too much authority and autonomy vested in an independent agency with no through life(cycle) capability oversight by a single entity is fraught with the real potential of going back to the days of dead cats being thrown over fences.

I’m not sure that is, in fact, a step forward.