By Lauren Harris

First Assistant Secretary Human Resources Development Craig Pandy speaks to Defence about the progress of the Human Resources Reform Program.

The Human Resource Development Program is enabling Defence to improve business performance across major corporate support functions and supporting other transformational and strategic reform initiatives within Defence People Group.

Defence is progressing more reform than ever before. With so many large and high-profile system development projects under way, the link between business process and technology is imperative to success.

To facilitate the close coordination of business needs in the People Domain with technology development, the Human Resource Development Program transitioned from Defence People Group to the Chief Information Officer Group in July. This facilitated the consolidation of personnel system projects including PMKeyS, Joint Project 2080 2B.1, Work Health and Safety Management Information System, Interim Career Management Solution, PMKeyS Home Portal and the Job Families solution.

Leading the Program and its transition from Defence People Group to the Chief Information Officer Group is Craig Pandy, who was appointed Head Workforce and Shared Services Reform (later renamed Head Human Resources Reform) in November 2009. His role expanded to include the management of the Personnel Systems Domain with the establishment of the Human Resources Reform Program in February 2010.

Arrival in Defence

"I arrived toward the end of the diagnostic phase of the workforce and shared services stream of the Strategic Reform Program," Craig says.

"It had generated a lot of interest, and no small amount of anxiety, but we managed to calm things down and identify what we would be able to achieve in the way of actual reform through shared services and workforce re-balancing.

"There is the temptation with reform activity to commit to a big number and then just scramble to do whatever you can to get to that number. This undermines real reform and then people start doing sub-optimising, which can jeopardise capability, just to squeeze within the target. As a team, we were committed to not doing that and identified what it was we, as an organisation, could do sensibly with buy-in from stakeholders. After three years, through the efforts of the team, the organisation, and the stakeholders involved, the Workforce Shared Services Reform stream remains on track".

Biggest challenges

With the success of the Human Resources Reform Program there are also challenges.
Craig found the biggest challenges his team had to face were a history of the organisation making deep cuts and labelling the remaining stop-gap measures and band-aids as 'reform'.

"As a team with our stakeholders, we held to the commitment we had made to do the things we had agreed were sustainable," Craig explains.

The current major challenges for the Program are two-fold: with the creation of the Human Resources Development Division, the capability coordination functions of the People Domain, which previously resided with the Defence People Group, now sit within the Department's IT organisation. 

"This is not a new construct within Government, or the private sector, as ICT is typically located with corporate support functions in most major shared services operation," Craig says. "But it is new to Defence, and overcoming the tribalism to create something which spans the stove-pipes did not immediately gel for everyone. But because the Personnel Systems and Innovation team has demonstrated the value they bring to the Chief Information Officer Group, and continue to maintain their strong connections to the People Domain, people are discovering that there has been not a loss of capability but an enhancement - and in ways which were not foreseen. One of the major things it achieves is de-cluttering the governance structure for the delivery of Joint Project 2080 2B.1 (see break-out), and reduce a major risk of complex governance and delivery structures." 

The second challenge is the delivery of the largest enterprise resource planning replacement in the Commonwealth. 

"A Human Resource system which touches a workforce of more than 100,000, with the capacity to reach beyond to the past workforce which is more than double that number, is no small thing," Craig says. 

"Any issues will get noticed. The immediate challenge is to fit our complex and numerous business processes to an out-of-the-box solution. That would be fine if we were an out-of-the-box organisation. This will take some effort." 

But Craig is confident. 

"Our organisation is far more sophisticated in its understanding of IT than it was 10 years ago when PMKeyS was first launched. We have a team who have endured the years of struggling with a complex system, and a partner (solution integrator) who has done this before for another large defence organisation. And we have a user group who have a lot of strategic reform benefits riding on implementing a modern stream-lined human resource system, and are looking for a better solution. This is the best chance we've got."

Reform program success

Craig reveals the successful aspects of the reform program.

"We were able to engage well with stakeholders and secure their commitment to finding new ways to do things better. We found our stakeholders were open-minded and prepared to engage and discuss the 'art of the possible'.

"They also recognised when wins were being made and advantages gained, and they were not shy about providing feedback when it was due."

In June, the Program had achieved close to 70 per cent of its total decade target.

Current focus

At the end of June, the Program was given First Pass Approval by Government to take Joint Project 2080 through to design phase. The Program is now working towards Second Pass Approval next year.

"Joint Project 2080 has been sitting in the Defence Capability Plan for 10 years and this is certainly the furthest its been, which is a credit to the efforts of the project and business teams involved," Craig says.

Going live

Release 1A of the payroll management system will go live in mid-2014 and subsequent releases to 2016. Release 1A is focused on ADF Pay, which will reduce the number of payroll platforms to one.