On The Record: Chief of Navy travel challenge

7 December 2011 By Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Ray Griggs, AM, CSC, RAN

The articles in The Australian on 5 and 6 December are misleading and misrepresent a recent travel challenge message I issued Navy wide. The articles quote selectively from my message and attempt to paint the picture that I have lashed out at Navy people. Any objective reading of the full message would reveal this is not the case.

The Navy and the Australian Defence Force are living in challenging times. A significant challenge is the Strategic Reform Program which sees Defence reducing its costs by $20 billion over ten years so that this money can be reinvested back into new capability for the Australian Defence Force. Part of that program is approximately $1 billion allocated to travel reform across Defence.

As part of Navy’s cultural reform program we have ten signature behaviours aimed at providing the guideposts for our cultural change journey. One of those is to challenge and innovate, another is cost consciousness. I am using an ongoing program of challenges to focus Navy on reform. This message is one of these. My message is a simple one – don’t travel unless there is a real need to do so. If you need to travel maximise the use of military accommodation if available and claim back only what you spend. Most Navy people have no issue with this concept of what I call a no win no loss approach on travel. It should not cost Navy people money to travel on business but nor should we make money from it.

Cultural change is hard and if it is real it will confront some people. What I am doing is engaging all of Navy as the educated and sophisticated workforce that it is. This message challenges Navy people not orders them. The Strategic Reform Program is all about reform generating efficiencies to ensure we have the right equipment so that our people can do their job in the best way possible.

The text of CN's original signal is detailed below.

Chief of Navy's Signature Behaviour Travel Challenge for 2012 and Beyond

In August, I issued my first NGN challenge regarding truth in reporting as a way of making NGN and our signature behaviours more tangible. I intend to issue a fresh NGN challenge every couple of months to keep us all focussed on the reform journey that we must make to improve our Navy. These challenges are for all Navy people whether serving in the Navy group or in another part of the Defence Organisation. The next challenge relates to travel and in particular how much we spend on it. As you know we are over two years into the Defence Strategic Reform Program which is seeking to achieve $20 billion in cost reductions to be reinvested into Navy and other ADF capabilities which support the Navy mission to Fight and Win at Sea. One billion dollars of these cost reductions are allocated to travel reform. This is a significant challenge which will require strong, focussed leadership across all of Navy, supported by cultural reform in our approach to travel and allowances.

We have already done some very good work across Navy in reducing our overall travel spend in the last two years and bringing down the 'per head' cost of travel within Navy to one of the lowest of all the Defence groups. However, this has largely been achieved through better use of cheaper airfares rather than a rigorous campaign to really challenge our need for travel and the accommodation and allowances demands of our people who are required to travel. We have not really seen any great reduction in the amount of travel undertaken.

Notwithstanding the progress made to date, I am convinced that we are still challenged by two basic problems:

1. The need to travel: The first is that too much activity is still being planned which generates a travel demand which with a little innovation, the same outcomes could be achieved through alternative means such as using unified communications or video conferencing.
2. The entitlements culture: The second is that we still have a culture of entitlement as it relates to accommodation and allowances when we travel which is at odds with our signature behaviour of cost consciousness and our more general duty to spend the Australian tax payers money ethically and efficiently. There is a very simple and basic principle that should apply when any of us travel - if you are required to travel on business you should not be out of pocket but nor should you make money (a no win no loss approach).

To get on top of our travel spend, we need to do a number of things:

1. More rigorously look at the need to travel from the person travelling through to supervisors and approving authorities;
2. Travel approvers are to be more than a rubber stamp and are to ensure there is a valid reason to travel, the journey is the most efficient one possible (eg. Flights are not timed to trigger additional meal allowances etc) and the numbers travelling are fully justified;
3. Aggressively seek out opportunities to utilise service accommodation wherever possible both domestically and internationally. Too often this is a perfunctory step and those travelling have no interest in service accommodation; staying in a hotel should be the exception and not the rule;
4. Budget holders are to reduce the number of instances of travel by 10% from FY 2009/10 levels while seeking to further reduce the per head cost of each travel instance;
5. Shift our thinking to a genuine no win no loss philosophy relating to allowances when we travel;
6. Explain the need for this approach at unit and branch level to all our people; and
7. Continue the practice of Star Ranked and SES Officers not utilising business class travel between Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

The challenge

My challenge then to each person in navy regardless of rank or which part of Defence you serve is to demonstrate your commitment to our Signature Behaviour of Cost Consciousness by limiting your travel requirements to the absolute necessary and combining meeting requirements to maximise the benefits of travel when it is needed. Similarly, I challenge every Navy person to maximise the use of service accommodation and to move away from the practice of automatically drawing the full travel budget allocation of funds for meals and incidentals and only take what you need consistent with a no win no loss philosophy. As a practical step perhaps start by only drawing around 60% of what the travel budget calculator indicates for meals and incidentals and re-assess your actual need towards the end of the journey.

I will be reviewing budget performance across the Navy group over the next twelve months to gauge our success in this challenge and will look to promulgate the various budget outcomes across Navy via the Defence intranet so each of you can gauge our respective successes.

We are operating in very tight budgetary times, every dollar we spend is one that cannot be spent elsewhere to achieve our mission. It is up to all of us to play our part and to be genuinely cost conscious.