'It's time to consolidate NDHQ' & 'DND to take-over Nortel Campus' (Merged threads)

[Long in the tooth]

GINge! - I really like that!  Your obviously a big fan of Yes Minister!

 

[logau]

Ref my large typing - is the font control feature

For all you true blue ruck sack luggers - why NDHQ is dysfunctional is as follows

They don't reply to email or letters telling them to do anything. Its all a 1 to 1 relationship where by if you want somethign done you have to walk around and make people do it. If you could send a tasking sideways or up or down any argument for NDHQ reduction might make sense.

Imagine a jungle where many tribes live who do not see the power of a central control as legitamate

Airforce goes after the army goes after the navy - and its a real furball dogfight to do anything at Fort Fumble.

Thats NDHQ - or Iraq without the bullets and bombs

 

[Kirkhill]

Thats NDHQ - or Iraq without the bullets and bombs

So THAT's the reason they don't buy any of those.   >

 

[logau]

hey - they are way ahead of you ref your stand and wait line at the bottom of your post.

PM Louis St Laurent launched the CF circa 1948 - 1968 and he's memorialised in Hull Quebec where the DND support teams live - the people who buy and manage all the kit in the CF inventory.

The building looks out a multi-million building housing the Hull Casino............................ Uncle Louis's bldg is known as

Louis Stand Around

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

As a civvie, tell me where the following logic breaks down....

The military is an organization.
An organization is designed to deliver a service (or product which is not applicalbe in this case)
The service required determines equipment and personnel.
The equipment and personnel determine the support structures, logistics and org chart.

Bottom Line:   I simply cannot fathom an executive that would erode its revenues, income, whatever (pick a metric) by 40% and not makes cuts to itself in order to re-invest whatever it could to minimize the damage to the underlying service.

33 generals???   Give me a break.   There are no justifiable excuses.   There is only a clearly demonstrated mutually-supported culture of self-interest and to see where that is guaranteed to go, check Enron....




CB.    

 

[logau]

Blackie

You are 100% right (in my opinion) about the executives not reducing their revenue.......and the rest of your post.

Its not the executives - aka the Generals or the Full Colonels or the Legions of burned  out Chief Warrant Officer cheerleaders, who, like many of us at NDHQ are only bobble heads.

It is, and has been clearly demonstrated in numerous public and private sources, that the Canadian Taxpayer is the idiot - who, through his ready acceptance of other government services/bribes/cake and theatre, denies the men and women of the CF - the equipment and capabilities to lay a such a thumping on an enemy of the country that they will never think of looking sideways at us.

So Blackie - we have seen the enemy and he is us!   :threat: :skull:

 

[TCBF]

TCBF - Now you are talking sense. There is no need to throw out the baby with the bath water.

But now we can get back to the strawman..... amalgamate units

- Lets amalgamate NDHQ.  Build a new building at Connaught Ranges.  Pull all of those understrength and over-ranked cells out of Ottawa Center and the Gatineau, and put them into one gated compound five hundred meters from the rifle range.  Think of the savings!

 

[Edward Campbell]

If only it was so simple.

While arbitrary cuts to NDHQ are generally good ideas every few years – no multimillion dollar consultant reports required, thank you, just 5% across the board, no questions asked or answered – real, major reform of the system requires political will that has been totally absent in Ottawa since 1967.

Although I have been retired for many, many years I remain confident in my guesstimate  that the centre in Ottawa (Privy Council Office, Treasury Board Secretariat, Department of Finance) mistrusts DND because it is poorly led, at the top bureaucratic and military levels,*and even more poorly managed.

A Liberal MND, Don (Thumper) Macdonald, imposed the current “system” on NDHQ – trying, I think to correct the management defects that were evident then, 35+ years ago. He made things worse by mixing a few key functions – allowing senior military people to intrude into areas that are, quite frankly, beyond both their ken, in most cases, and certainly not in their area of responsibility, and by forcing senior bureaucrats into areas where they ought not to tread.

Add to that the fact that NDHQ is not about the CF – it is a major department of government: one that has a large staff and spends a lot of money. DND/NDHQ is a rich source of patronage. I don't think I'm telling tales out of school by telling you that during one of the regular rounds of cuts about 20 years ago DND’s ”general manager” (the VCDS) was told, explicitly I think, that while cuts and more were necessary and while efficiency was a laudable goal, there was to be no effort to consolidate NDHQ in Ontario – all or part of it was to stay in Québec (then Hull, now Gatineau). Since here was no way to move it all there, without spending hundreds of millions, it was to remain split. I do not believe that political direction has changed or will change. There is, politically, no way to reduce the national government's footprint in Québec – nor is there any good reason (beyond a massive downsizing of the whole thing) to do so – and no one in the “centre” wants to endure the Sturm und Drang of the civil service unions that would be occasioned by replacing DND/NDHQ (in Gatineau) with another government department.

So, indeed: reduce, reuse, recycle and reorganize - but don't hope for much.

DND/NDHQ needs reform, starting with excellent management, at the top of both the bureaucratic and military heaps. If it gets that then some administrative reform can be made in Ottawa.

That being said, it's a great idea, TCBF.

----------

* Yes, that includes Gen. Hillier! No one disputes his skill as an operational military commander but he is asked required to be more than that and I'm not sure that he has achieved anything like approval for his overall leadership – including, especially, the transformation exercise.



Edit: typo - "... cuts to NDHQ are generally good ideas every few years ...". While my ideas are, in my tiny mind, god likeI really meant to say good.

 

[McG]

...there was to be no effort to consolidate NDHQ in Ontario – all or part of it was to stay in Québec (then Hull, now Gatineau). ...

That is too bad, because there is a lot to be gained from putting it all under one roof.  At the very least, the Army could look to ensure those scattered elements of the Land Staff get brought into the national capitol region:

...

The whole force development in the Army is impaired against doing this right.  While the force development & requirements folk are not in the same building, at least they are in the same city (basically).  However, with DLCD and doctrine in Kingston, the two halves of the Army's force development brain are not even close enough to sit together over coffee every other week & ensure they are working in the same step.

With equipment it stands out more because the wrong answer gets dumped on the troops & they have to make it work (or there is nothing & the troops still have to make things work).  When the doctrine side is missing, the troops make their own (which is a lot easier that fabricating vehicles, weapons & other kit in the field).  However, it seems to me that signs of the doctrine ball being dropped are plenty to be found.  The Infantry platoon & company doctrine is so badly out of date that it is hidden and not even available on the AEL.

When the field army runs into problems that require a fast & coherent response from the national headquarters, the solution is to create new ad-hoc organizations (like the CF C-IED TF) with PYs to do what should already be happening in existing staffs ... except that it is not because those staffs are so physically separated that good communication is not happening at the working levels.

...

 

[TCBF]

IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE READ JACK ENGLISH'S PAPER ON WHERE THE REGULAR AND RESERVE ARMY FIT INSIDE DND - http://www.stratnet.ucalgary.ca/reserves2004/publications/english.doc

- Love to.  Would you have a link that works?

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Hey may not answer since that post is 2004 and he is a "Guest"

 

[TCBF]

I find it amusing that a lot of these opinions come from civvies, ppl in the recruiting process, or ppl who have never served here at NDHQ. 

- Kind of like all of the other threads on this site.  We all often discuss places we have never been and things we have never done.  Ahhhh.....  the glory of the Internet.talk abou

 

[TCBF]

Hey may not answer since that post is 2004 and he is a "Guest"

- Then how did my post from yesterday.... is this a merged thread?????!!!???

 

[Neill McKay]

That is too bad, because there is a lot to be gained from putting it all under one roof.  At the very least, the Army could look to ensure those scattered elements of the Land Staff get brought into the national capitol region:

So, to sum up what has happened over the last 40 years: in trying to create a more efficient organization in which everyone is under the same roof and you don't have to walk the length of a city block to get anything done, we have instead created one that is too big to fit under any existing roof and is now at least as dispersed as the original three Service headquarters were.

 

[Edward Campbell]

So, to sum up what has happened over the last 40 years: in trying to create a more efficient organization in which everyone is under the same roof and you don't have to walk the length of a city block to get anything done, we have instead created one that is too big to fit under any existing roof and is now at least as dispersed as the original three Service headquarters were.

Much more dispersed. Until circa 1970 the three service HQs were clustered together in downtown Ottawa - with a few offices in other, nearby buildings. Now part of NDHQ is in the Pearkes Building (two 17+ story towers by the Rideau Canal) but much (most?) of it is scattered all over two cities: Ottawa and Gatineau.

 

[TCBF]

- Well, dispersion IS crucial to survival on a nuclear battlefield.

8)

 

[George Wallace]

- Well, dispersion IS crucial to survival on a nuclear battlefield.

8)

Only if you ARE NOT down wind and down river from a strategic targeted Nuclear facility outside a Military Reservation.... >

 

[54/102 CEF]

So, to sum up what has happened over the last 40 years: in trying to create a more efficient organization in which everyone is under the same roof and you don't have to walk the length of a city block to get anything done, we have instead created one that is too big to fit under any existing roof and is now at least as dispersed as the original three Service headquarters were.

Not really - There`s the big building you see on TV then several other Complementary Bldgs around the City. Plus its as connected as any corporate HQ - but there are little power centres all over the place.

Get this - Minister approves a project - then it continues to circulate for signature - then it gets re-approved and verified at the Treasury Board. Sounds like big time duplication higher than DND to me.

Projects are supposed to start and stop in 28 months vs 108 months over ER Campbell's time. But obviously some will take longer and some shorter. If its a COTS project - Commercial Off the Shelf - it may look quicker but is it really?

So if the government could push the approval of certain levels of projects lower down - to say the Dept rather than the Dept plus Treasury Board - that could speed things up and make a spread out HQ greater than a pasture for some and a heart attack in the making for others.

Just my 2 cents as I ride the Shuttle to Point B from Point A.

 

[Greymatters]

Minor query, not a hijack:

Okay, Im confused - how did that 4 year gap get spanned?  Was this split from something else?

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

We like to keep things info-friendly, so it was merged from another topic that swerved away from its original topic.

We're not just a bunch of pretty faces, ya know.......  :-*