Defence Magazine

The response to a number of CSIG Business Improvement Projects has reminded me of my mother. My dear mother lived from 1905 to 1983. She started living on a farm in the Riverina region of NSW when she married my father in 1927. For much of her life she was able to avoid new-fangled city-based developments like supermarkets and self-service petrol stations.

My mother preferred grocery stores where helpful shop assistants with aprons filled boxes with grocery supplies and carried them out to her car and placed them in the boot.

The decline of these services in the latter decades of my mother's life was a source increasing irritation. I suspect she never used an ATM, even though they became increasingly common in the 1970s. Why deny herself the opportunity for a chat with the bank teller - many of them were very pleasant and some of them could keep you abreast town gossip.

Of course, her youngest child, the smart-alec economics undergraduate, had some observations to make on these developments. In the growing industrial economy, where the work-force was combining with increasing amounts of capital equipment, labour productivity, real wages and standards of living were rising. Labour was becoming expensive. Employers needed to economise on labour.

Around my parents' farm, horses and wheat bags were being replaced by "ag bikes", tractors, auto headers and bulk wheat bins. Labour was becoming expensive on the farm as well as at the service station and grocery stores in town. Sheep shearing seemed be one of the few things they couldn't effectively mechanise. All this high theory from the smart-alec was just a further source of irritation for my mother. Service is service and it was disappearing. Life was not how it used to be.

Defence organisations are not immune from labour-saving technological development. Paradoxically, if DMO delivers it, it is often welcomed as sophisticated, state-of-art, specialist military equipment. If, however, CSIG delivers it, and especially if it involves an element of self-service, like a travel card, then some of our customers start to sound just like my mother - namely, the old world of service is coming to an end. Of course, I don't have the courage to tell these people they remind me of my late mother, who was born in 1905.

The reality is, of course, that CSIG is not obsessed with new technology at the expense of service. The three new customer access channels officially launched on November 30 include as one channel, face-to-face Customer Service Centres. But each channel has been designed to bring back the easy-to-access and time-honoured personalised services that some of us may still remember. Now you can:

Thirteen new Customer Service Centres opened for business on November 30 at Russell 1; South Bandiana; Defence Plazas - Sydney and Melbourne; Anglesea Barracks; RAAF Edinburgh; RAAF Darwin; Lavarack Barracks; RAAF Amberley; RAAF Richmond; HMAS Albatross; Leeuwin Barracks and the Singleton Military Area. Following a performance review over the period November 30 to mid-March, a decision will be made on opening additional centres at all other Defence bases.

While my mother might have shied away from the new technology, she would have loved our new Customer Service Centres, and we hope you do as well.

PS. Soon after I thought about writing on this topic, I encountered a surprising new example of self-service. On my way to work at 0740 hours; I was pulled over and breathalysed. The officer put the apparatus through the window and asked me, first, to remove the cellophane wrapping from the tube and second, to take deep breath and blow into the tube. Having established my sobriety, the officer then asked me to remove the tube and dispose of it myself. (My mother was also about 60 when she started to get sick of self service.)

ISIS deals with a pyramid of accounts

By Damien Chifley

Defence's payment of accounts, both employee's and suppliers, has been revolutionised with the implementation of state-of-the-art data imaging and optical character recognition technology. The Invoice Scanning and Imaging System (ISIS) initiative is part of the CSIG Business Improvement Project.

It will re-engineer CSIG's accounts payable processes and centralise CSIG accounts processing functions to two Centralised Accounts Processing Centres. The primary centre is located at Puckapunyal in Victoria with a smaller site in Edinburgh, South Australia.

A key milestone was reached in September 2004, when the Edinburgh site went live. The Puckapunyal site has been live since November 24.

When an invoice is received into one of the two centres, it will be scanned and the ISIS technology will read the invoice to find the information required to process a payment in ROMAN. If additional data is required, such as account codes, cost centres, goods receipts, etc, the customer who procured the goods or services will be contacted via e-mail to supply the missing information via an automated form attached to the e-mail.

The information gathered from the form will be loaded into ROMAN to complete the invoice document. Once all the data has been collected, ISIS will complete the processing of the invoice document and it will be processed by ROMAN in accordance with due date guidelines.

As part of the change management and communication process for each region, a mail-out to the most frequently used vendors has been undertaken to advise them of the new process and where to send invoices. Vendors will be requested to submit invoices with either a Purchase Order number or a customer contact. Invoices that do not contain this information may be returned to the vendor for further information - delaying the payment.

Purchase Orders generated from both ROMAN and SDSS contain an invoice address, therefore SDSS invoices will be sent to the relevant area outside of the Processing Centre.

Damien Chifley is Project Director, ISIS Project, CSIG.

Think green, act green

Making an impact ... A Kiowa helicopter from 162 Reconnaissance Squadron flying over Townshend Island at Shoalwater Bay during Exercise Crocodile 2003. Photo by Sgt Paul Mensch

Planning an exercise? Then stop, look around the area and think of the impact your equipment and personnel could have on the environment, says Robyn Ross.

Many people in the community would assume the environment is probably not a high priority when Defence is planning military activities.

And what about ensuring that activities are conducted in accordance with environmental legislative obligations? Surely that is an expectation above and beyond the call of duty, especially when you're not too sure what the environmental legislation is.

CSIG's Environment, Heritage and Risk (EH and R) Branch is all too familiar with these scenarios. Our role is to make life easier for Service personnel who are working hard to achieve their preparedness requirements.

While we can't change the environmental legislation, the policy obligations nor the personal liability you might face if you choose not to comply, we can assist with helping Service personnel understand their obligations and minimise possible non-compliance scenarios.

We have a lot to look after - 34 million hectares of land as well as air space and sea, World Heritage areas, Ramsar (internationally protected) wetlands, endangered species, natural, indigenous and cultural heritage listed features and the Great Barrier Reef. The quality and diversity of the estate provides the ADF with a realistic and natural environment in which to train, not only today, but also for the ADF of the future.

What's our biggest concern? That Defence personnel won't be aware of their obligations, won't have considered the potential environmental impact of their activity and, consequently, will unwittingly breech legislation by causing a significant impact on the environment.

EH and R takes a pro-active approach to supporting ADF activities while protecting the environment. By working in partnership with the three Services, HQJOC and the ADFWC, we are producing a series of support tools to help Service personnel to plan and conduct activities in a way that minimises the impact on the environment without detracting from the training objectives.

Importantly, our approach is based on the principle of minimising the bureaucratic burden.

The support tools include a simple checklist to assist in planning activities along with a range of web-based information packages.

CSIG has 36 regional environmental staff to help personnel use the checklist and provide expert advice. We also support the gaining of environmental approvals from relevant state and federal agencies.

Another initiative is the upgrade, where necessary, of range standing orders (RSO). Environmental requirements are being integrated into RSOs so that an individual will not need to know the environmental details, but simply adhere to RSOs.

But what about the US forces who come to Australia for exercises? Are they expected to adhere to the same stringent rules? Yes, they are. As a result of lessons we have learned through planning for Exercise Talisman Sabre 05, we have agreed to a joint Australia- US initiative to review how our combined exercise planning processes can easily meet environmental obligations. Like us, they have to adhere to RSOs.

Navy's environmental management plan has assisted it to understand better what it must do to comply with environmental legislation. A feature of the plan's development was the production of procedure cards on a range of environmental issues to help operators to understand their obligations quickly and easily.

Air Force was so impressed that it has committed to developing something similar, especially the procedure cards.

To round off the information to support Service personnel as they go about their daily activities, EH and R Branch is contributing to the development and review of doctrine. Environmental obligations are being integrated so that a consistent environmental understanding guides decisions at all levels across all activities. At the same time, environmental awareness training is being incorporated into a range of Service courses.

All these measures are designed to support Service personnel achieving their core business while meeting their environmental obligations as easily as possible. We in EH and R are keen to receive input from personnel on the types of environmental support tools that would make their job easier.

Robyn Ross is Assistant Director, Sustainabilities Strategies, CSIG.

For further information:
http://defweb.cbr.defence.gov.au/environment |
robyn.ross@defence.gov.au

Defence

Corporate Services and Infrastructure Group

The world changes

ISIS deals with a pyramid of accounts

Think green, act green

Planning an exercise? Then stop, look around the area and think of the impact your equipment and personnel could have on the environment, says Robyn Ross.