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Management information on operational deployability at the Ministry of Defence
Follow-up audit
The Court of Audit published a report on the Ministry of Defence's monthly reports on 10 December. One of the purposes of the monthly reports is to inform the Minister of Defence of the operational deployability of the defence units in a particular month. Our report is a follow-up to an audit we originally carried out in 2006. In that audit, we had found that the monthly reports were not fit for this purpose. At the request of the Minister of Defence, our follow-up audit considered whether there had been an acceptable improvement in the situation.
Since our initial audit, the Ministry of Defence has prepared
many, often good, improvement plans. An information architecture
has been developed to provide for the timely and complete provision
of data that combine operational information with other relevant
management information. In practice, however, the implementation of
the plans has led to little if any improvement.
The goal formulated by the ministry in 2006 that 'the operational
commander's opinion is based on hard, verifiable figures that are
supported by personnel, materiel logistics, financial and
operational information systems' had not been achieved by the end
of 2008. The nature and extent of the shortcomings revealed by our
follow-up audit in the source systems themselves (which must
provide input to calculate deployability information) and in the
interfaces between the systems are comparable to those found by our
original audit.
Another goal formulated by the ministry in 2006 ('the government
must be able to rely on the ministry delivering what it says in its
plans and monthly reports, with the information being correct and
measurable in hard numbers') had not been achieved by the end of
2008.
We recommend that a record be made of the time available for the
implementation of improvement plans, the goals and the personnel to
achieve them. Capacity should be provided for the implementation
and progress should be periodically reported to the defence
minister or state secretary.
We recommend that the Ministry of Defence give priority to
implementing plans that have already been prepared and pay
attention to, for example, how the required improvement in
measuring deployability (source systems, measuring systems, etc.)
relates to and is anchored in other projects at the Ministry of
Defence. Attention should also be paid to the target situation and
its gradual achievement.
We endorse the intention to improve the forward-looking quality of the cover note by, in any event, paying more attention to important operational risks and to the risks of not being able to put the deployment plan into operation. We also recommend that risks in the entire defence organisation be identified by means of management controls and that the other shortcomings that have been detected be eliminated.
The minister wrote that he largely recognised the conclusions outlined by the Court of Audit. He agreed with our conclusion that the implementation of improvement plans had proven unfeasible, particular with regard to guaranteeing the reliability of the information produced by the various systems. According to the minister, these systems include records of personnel, materiel and operational deployability.