• This report has raised a wide range of issues around DE&S skills, processes and working interfaces. In order to address these issues, the organisation needs to undergo profound change. Previous reforms to the organisational construct have not delivered the necessary changes. This suggests that the problems are structural. In order to implement significant reforms, alternative approaches are likely to be more successful and faster than simply "remodelling" the existing DE&S structure and ways-of-working.
• The core project delivery activities of DE&S should be organised into a separate organisation, which operates at arms-length from the rest of the Department. This separate entity should be free to develop best-in-class skills and processes for its core tasks. It would be rewarded on the basis of successfully achieving clearly defined objectives related to the delivery of projects on time and on budget.
• The injection of greater external commercial skills and undertaking deeper changes to the way in which DE&S is organised would likely be better options than continuing the path of internally-driven reform and improvement. Recent observations by the House of Commons Committee Defence Committee concur, with one report116 stating that "DE&S needs to indentify key posts where good experience in the various special skills is required now, and develop a strategy for drawing in such experienced staff from outside DE&S".
• It is likely that involvement of the private sector in this process would be desirable, at the very least to help with skills and knowledge transfer, and possibly more deeply to speed more fundamental change. Anticipated benefits associated with such 'commercialisation' or 'contractorisation' models include:
- the injection of skills and processes that are unlikely to be easily developed internally;
- clear realignment of interfaces and incentives to correct some of the issues raised in earlier chapters, such as "blurring" between DE&S and the Centre or undue military influence; and
- an acceleration of change processes and efficiency gains through external, commercially-driven management practices.
• In view of security concerns, both commercial and military, commercial partners in the Go-Co agreement will need to be selected carefully.
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116 Defence Equipment 2008: Government response to the Committee's Tenth Report of Session 2007-08, House of Commons Defence Committee (Jun 08)