Recommendations that will lead to one of the largest organisational transformations seen by the Department of Defence and Australian Defence Force have been adopted by Australian Government and the Australian Defence Force.
The Defence Minister Kevin Andrews made the announcement and the official public release of the "First Principles Review: Creating One Defence" report at Parliament alongside Dr David Peever, Chair of the Review Committee and the Secretary and Chief of Defence Force.
75 out of 76 recommendations in the Defence First Principles Review have been agreed to, or agreed to in principle.
"Despite the Defence's outstanding operational record, there needs to be a better balance between operational excellence and organisational effectiveness," said Andrews.
The report will focus on correcting the drift away from contemporary best practice in order to reduce wastage and create a unified and integrated organisation that is more consistently linked to its strategy. This has been called the One Defence approach.
Dr Peever outlined the the there were four features of this approach which included "a strong strategic centre that will be characteristed by clearer accountabilities, clarity of direction, strong policy advice, services becomming capability managers, the VCDF becoming the future force authority and capability authority, and enhanced organisational arrangements around strategy and planning."
Peever said that Defence has been subject to a plethora of reviews over many years.
"This review [should] be used to clear the decks of previous reviews, so the organisation can get on in an unencumbered way with this reform agenda."
Among the larger changes recommended in the review is disbanding the Capability Development Group and Defence Material Organisation and transfering those functions into a new Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group and other more appropriate areas.
While Andrews outlined the focus of the report was not an efficiency review, he said he expects that there will be restructure to meet future force needs, and projects that the net loss of jobs resulting from implementing recommendations would be around 1000.
The Full Report can be downloaded by the Department of Defence website