Cutting the CF/DND HQ bloat - Excess CF Sr Leadership, Public Servants and Contractors

[McG]

Our army needs soldiers and guns-not more bureaucrats
Matt Gurney
National Post
19 May 2011

Peter MacKay remaining in the National Defence portfolio wasn't a surprise. MacKay is a high profile minister, and the Tories like to tell anyone who'll listen that they Support The Troops. Sticking one of the big guns of the party in that cabinet post is one way of showing that commitment. Besides, MacKay has done a decent job of it, and by all accounts likes the role and enjoys working with the men and women of the Canadian Forces.

But what was a bit unexpected was the appointment of Julian Fantino, former chief of the Toronto Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police, to be Associate Minister of National Defence, essentially MacKay's deputy.

Fantino was only elected last fall -hardly an experienced parliamentarian. There have been association ministers of defence before, but the position has often been left vacant. Fantino is the first to fill it under Prime Minister Harper.

There are political reasons to give Fantino something with a big profile: He's a well-known Toronto-area MP. And Defence isn't the worst place to put his years of work in public security to use, either. But those political reasons aside, it must be asked why Defence needed an extra minister. If anything, it needs more soldiers and equipment.

Earlier this year, it was announced that National Defence had purchased a large complex of modern office buildings in the Ottawa area. This was good news, as the existing National Defence headquarters was old and overcrowded. But when the announcement of the purchase was made, it was noted that the size of the civilian staff at Defence had grown by 31% between 2006 and 2009. Indeed, the civilian staff at Defence had grown so large, so rapidly, that it was actually exceeding its authorized strength. Defence is allotted 25,000 civilians to run the ministry. Somehow, that had ballooned to 28,500. No wonder they were out of room.

This didn't look particularly good on the Harper Tories, who have been rightly criticized for abandoning their small-government agenda. But what made them look even worse was the fact that even while the size of Defence's bureaucracy surged by 31%, the size of the Armed Forces -so publicly loved by the Tories -was able to increase only by 5% over the same period.

The military has received extra funding and equipment, starting under prime minister Paul Martin and continuing under Stephen Harper. But the Canadian Forces still have urgent equipment shortfalls, and are simply not large enough to do all the jobs expected of them.

Consider the last few weeks. Almost 3,000 Canadian military personnel are fighting in Afghanistan. Hundreds of others have joined the NATO campaign against Libya (indeed, a Canadian general is commanding the entire international ef-fort). Meanwhile, at home, we've had three major natural disasters strike all at once: major flooding in Manitoba and Quebec, and a devastating wildfire in Alberta that has nearly destroyed the town of Slave Lake, turning thousands of Canadian citizens into displaced persons. And, of course, at all times, the military must also have the reserve strength necessary to handle additional crises.

Canada's air force needs new fighter jets, and more than just the 65 F-35s the government has said it intends to purchase (a smaller number of F-35s, and a large order of less-advanced but still modern jets, would strike the right balance between size and sophistication). The air force also urgently requires more helicopters, both to carry supplies at home and abroad, and to (if necessary) transport troops into battle. The navy is rapidly rusting out, with virtually every type of ship in the fleet needing either upgrades or outright replacement. The army has benefit-ted the most from the Afghan-era urgent purchases, but still should be expanded, to reflect its duties both at home and abroad. And this is far from a complete list.

None of these steps are likely, unfortunately. The Tories will have other priorities in the years ahead. They must slay the deficit and protect the economy, while still spending enough to please their core constituencies. And as the combat mission in Afghanistan comes to an end, it's likely that the armed forces will fade into the background. As former chief of the defence staff Rick Hillier has mused, the Canadian military has no natural constituency, and can be easily shunted aside and ignored when not actively needed. This is especially true in times of fiscal restraint.

The Forces will no doubt get some extra equipment and additional personnel, but not as much as they need and deserve. They'll just have to content themselves with a new home for their bureaucrats and Julian Fantino.

 

[Infanteer]

"while the size of Defence's bureaucracy surged by 31%, the size of the Armed Forces -so publicly loved by the Tories -was able to increase only by 5% over the same period."

Wow - I'd be interested to see where exactly this bureaucratic growth is.

 

[vonGarvin]

"while the size of Defence's bureaucracy surged by 31%, the size of the Armed Forces -so publicly loved by the Tories -was able to increase only by 5% over the same period."

Wow - I'd be interested to see where exactly this bureaucratic growth is.

The 31% growth is referring to the increase of civilians at NDHQ

Earlier this year, it was announced that National Defence had purchased a large complex of modern office buildings in the Ottawa area. This was good news, as the existing National Defence headquarters was old and overcrowded. But when the announcement of the purchase was made, it was noted that the size of the civilian staff at Defence had grown by 31% between 2006 and 2009. Indeed, the civilian staff at Defence had grown so large, so rapidly, that it was actually exceeding its authorized strength. Defence is allotted 25,000 civilians to run the ministry. Somehow, that had ballooned to 28,500. No wonder they were out of room.

 

[Infanteer]

Yeah I got that part.  I'm wondering where the growth is concentrated - coffee fetchers, PA staff, project manager weenies?

 

[vonGarvin]

Yeah I got that part.  I'm wondering where the growth is concentrated - coffee fetchers, PA staff, project manager weenies?

Ah, seen. 

 

[the 48th regulator]

Yeah I got that part.  I'm wondering where the growth is concentrated - coffee fetchers, PA staff, project manager weenies?

IPSC, OSISS, PSP, Social Workers, Psychologists, Psychiatrists......

Let's remember many civillians working for DND, provide a service that someone in uniform can't, or can be recruited to do so.

dileas

tess

 

[McG]

Yeah I got that part.  I'm wondering where the growth is concentrated - coffee fetchers, PA staff, project manager weenies?

I know a lot of capital projects where growing huge staffs in that time period.  That is when DGLEPM & DGMEPM out grew the LStL Bldg in Gatineau, and it is when ADM(Mat) created two new DGs for major crown equipment projects.

I've heard a few times over the past month that Army training systems has been growing by 5% annually for the last three years.  That growth has me wondering where it has been happening.  I strongly suspect it has mostly been in within two layers of HQs.

 

[Pusser]

I too am curious about the growth of the civil service in NDHQ because, frankly, I see a lot of empty desks.  I also question how the public service can grow when their hiring policies are so F****D up!  My involvement in hiring civilians has led me to wonder how anyone can actually get a job with the federal government.

Why do we need to hire more civilians?  Because as empty as the civilian desks are, the military ones are worse.  There are many sections in NDHQ where there is little to no military continuity because all the military staff are either deployed, just back from being deployed or training to be deployed.  I was in one section where we had only two out of nine major billets filled.  The work is still there, so we have to hire civilians to do it when there are no military folks available.  Furthermore, we spend a lot of time shuffling the deck  and moving what few military folks are available from job to job before anyone gets a chance to actually accomplish anything.

As for how the public service can grow (despite hiring policies) faster than the CF is an easy question to answer.  Whereas it is possible to hire qualified people to enter the public service, the same is not true of the CF.  We have to train folks and our biggest problem in growing is not creating positions or in recruiting candidates, it's the fact that everybody is too busy to train the new ones coming in.  The irony is the fact that we can't train new members because all the folks who would train them are deployed (for the umpteenth time) and we can't deploy different people because they're not trained!  The dysfunctional cycle continues.

But I'm not bitter...

 

[McG]

As for how the public service can grow (despite hiring policies) faster than the CF is an easy question to answer.  Whereas it is possible to hire qualified people to enter the public service, the same is not true of the CF.  We have to train folks and our biggest problem in growing is not creating positions...

Actually, it used to be that any manager with a budget could create a civilian position or a P Res position.  New Reg F military positions did not happen unless they came from the government.  There was unsustainable, unrestrained growth of civilian positions through that time period.

...  the '06 to '09 window is also when the C-IED TF was created, and when I saw a number of permanent civilian positions created to back-fill for temporarily vacant Reg F positions.

 

[dapaterson]

The establishment is a mess.  Of course, many units / detachments have only the faintest idea of what their real establishment is, and are surprised to discover that "their" postions were temporary loans, folks held MMO, wartime accountable positions that aren't meant to be filled, or other problems.

Add to that the piecemeal force expansion that did not include a real HR implementation plan and created immediate demand for dozens of majors as staff (in orgs that were made pri 2 for manning) and it's no wonder there are problems - waving a magic wand and saying "Give me four hundred staff officers for Startop" is not a viable COA.  Unfortuantely, it was the one selected.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

It is growth of civ pers writ large - secretaries for every OC in a Svc Bn, IT guys to run our garrison networks etc etc

 

[McG]

MacKay faces job cuts at DND – and an eager rookie nipping at his heels
JANE TABER
OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
Thursday, May 26, 2011 8:23AM EDT
LINK

The anticipated slash and burn of the public service by the newly-minted Conservative majority government could be starting at the Department of National Defence. Reports Thursday morning say 2,100 jobs will be cut over the next three years.
...

We knew this adjustment was coming.  Some thoughts:

Contractor Cuts.  This will be a good thing.  Far too many of these contractors are probably already in an employee-employer relation with DND, and we need to clean-house to bring ourselves back to acceptable practices.  As an adjunct to this, I would suggest every contractor with a DWAN account have the ability to send external emails disabled - they do not actually work for the government, so they should not be able to appear as speaking for the government.  Contracting should not be a back door way of expanding our workforce if one cannot get SWE or military PYs.

Public Service Cuts. This should, hopefully, be mostly where rampant unrestrained civilian growth has occured: in HQs.  Unfortunately, while we have heard rumblings for a while about reducing the civilian footprint in higher HQs, the only reductions that I have seen so far are the result of higher HQs pulling back SWE on civilian retirement (from positions that have been around forever) in order to grow the HQs themselves.  The problem with retirement attrition is that low priorety jobs can continue to exist while high priorety jobs get cut simply based on the choice of incumbents to stay longer or go.

 

[Infanteer]

Agreed.  Our practices with civilians and contractors have gotten out of control and have allowed us to get away with poor mil HR management.  A perfect example is authorized positions going unfilled (because the staff officer is off in SOMETHINGCOM) and then being backfilled by civilians.  Not only does the military get away with making extra positions it doesn't have the manning for, but tactical HQs have to deal with critical positions being filled with civilians who fall under a completely different rubric of employment.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Like I said outside, these 2,100 jobs cuts could probably be accomplished by attrition. Especially over a three year period. This is a paltry amount given the big picture. Looks good on paper though.

Not that we couldn't use cuts, as already stated, in other areas anyway.

 

[dapaterson]

Agreed.  Our practices with civilians and contractors have gotten out of control and have allowed us to get away with poor mil HR management.  A perfect example is authorized positions going unfilled (because the staff officer is off in SOMETHINGCOM) and then being backfilled by civilians.  Not only does the military get away with making extra positions it doesn't have the manning for, but tactical HQs have to deal with critical positions being filled with civilians who fall under a completely different rubric of employment.

Given how rarely our tac HQs do anything but routine admin, maybe the solution is to reduce the number of HQs.

 

[Pusser]

When was the last time anyone took a rational look at their organization and concluded that they had too many staff?  If folks were more willing to do this, then we could take intelligent approach to reductions.  As it is, no one will admit that they're overstaffed.  The result is across the board cuts, which means shorthanded organizations get worse and the overstaffed simply have less fat.

Reductions require leadership and an acknowledgement that the guy whose billet is titled DODO 6-5-4-3-2 just might be redundant.

 

[dapaterson]

Reductions require leadership and an acknowledgement that the guy whose billet is titled DODO 6-5-4-3-2 just might be redundant.

Hey!  The Directorate of Official Directorate Organization performs a key function in organizing official directorates - particularly important as we enter this time of constraint and reductions, it is crucial to maintain agility and flexibility to have strucutural change to meet the evolving defence capability requirements - DODO is a key element in maintaining that success and needs to grow, not shrink.  We can just harvest PYs from less important function like Maritime surveillance or multi-purpose land combat forces.


(True story: I was once in a session with a defence scientist who, after detailed interviews, questionnaires and assessments with all 21 level 1s, had concluded that the biggest challenge and problem in DND, needing immediate attention before anything else, was a lack of office space in the NCR.)

 

[McG]

Like I said outside, these 2,100 jobs cuts could probably be accomplished by attrition. Especially over a three year period.

The only problem with reduction by attrition is that a job is not necessarily important just because the incumbent hangs around for a few more years, and another job is not necessarily unnecessary just because the incumbent chooses to leave government.  Reduction by attrition needs to be supported with work force adjustment so that people are moved to the important positions, and that it is the bottom priority positions that are allowed to go away.

Given how rarely our tac HQs do anything but routine admin, maybe the solution is to reduce the number of HQs.

There are more than enough cuts to be made in static non-tactical HQs without touching brigades and wings.  I think I've already stated which HQ I nominate for reduction.

 

[Pusser]

Hey!  The Directorate of Official Directorate Organization performs a key function in organizing official directorates - particularly important as we enter this time of constraint and reductions, it is crucial to maintain agility and flexibility to have strucutural change to meet the evolving defence capability requirements - DODO is a key element in maintaining that success and needs to grow, not shrink.  We can just harvest PYs from less important function like Maritime surveillance or multi-purpose land combat forces.

OK, but realize then that we will need to increase the staff at the Directorate of Silly Names and Acronyms (DSNA) in order to keep up with the changes.  After all, both organizations are vital to the functioning of DGOOF (Director General Official Organizational Formulation).  Otherwise CFOUL-UP (Chief of Formulative Organizational Underpinning of Lacklustre and Useless Programs) would be lost!

 

[dapaterson]

OK, but realize then that we will need to increase the staff at the Directorate of Silly Names and Acronyms (DSNA) in order to keep up with the changes.  After all, both organizations are vital to the functioning of DGOOF (Director General Official Organizational Formulation).  Otherwise CFOUL-UP (Chief of Formulative Organizational Underpinning of Lacklustre and Useless Programs) would be lost!

You got the abbreviation wrong - it's CFT, not CFOUL-UP.  Outcomes are the same, though...

There are more than enough cuts to be made in static non-tactical HQs without touching brigades and wings.  I think I've already stated which HQ I nominate for reduction.

I can think of two wings that could be closed immediately to no ill effect.  And our CMBGs have become administrative.  Operationalization is a good idea; but even that should save PYs as we return to more rational models, instead of needing a 40 pax bus for the G3 staff.