29 July 2007

Military Intelligence - Duntroon Style.

| S4anta
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Now, like the rest of y’all, I see reading news sites as an excuse to look intelligent while secretly wondering why the ratings of Big brother are slipping amongst a lack of other documentary exposes. Naturally this exposes me to all the whole gambit of Government stupidity (my employment not withstanding), not just in this wonderful land, but all over the globe.

However, after spending a number of years in Canberra, I have to admit that Duntroon is slightly more funnier and inept than Stalag 13, as is exlemplified in this article. somehow, a Kiwi national, has managed to knock off an army 4wd to use on his farm, god bless him. The kicker for me is that he has managed to repeatedly fill his car up at an army bowser, and borrow a trailer on weekends, as well as pulling being able to swap the cars plates to complete the tomfoolery. All this without the powers that be able to even realise that a vehicle has been stolen.

The morning I get awoken by paniced voices on Sky News, explaining that Australia’s counter-terrorism measures have been surprisingly usurped by a three fingered, worm hypnotising, yak milk drinking brigadoon from the boondocks of Bangalore, I will hold each bourbon swilling, camoflagued wearing monkey that I have ever encountered in Civic, Kingston and the footy field who had ever been at Duntroon solely to blame. If you cant seem able to count the cars in your car park, you sure as shit are not going to able to stop an individual who has spent the last few years of his life being pepped up on more hypocrisy(sp?) than you good folks wear green (or white) after Labour Day.

PS:quitting smoking apparently makes you cranky.

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Funniest article I’ve read here in ages! Nice work.
And yep, the great god of outsourcing strikes again. It is just soooo efficient and cheap. Yep.
the great thing about contracts (especially when the government awards them) is the almost total lack of comeback or control over the delivery of the contract, once it’s awarded.
I’m hoping they are swinging back the other way, finally.

Absent Diane11:39 am 31 Jul 07

There is so much focus on red tape which distracts from the actual scope of the project.. and don’t get me started on how useless project managers are.

I have carefully ducked having much to do with the entire defence activity for all of my very many years. As an outside observer, I note only that the apparent capacity of ADF (and the associated people in the Department and the legions of contractors great and large) to err is quite remarkable. They have included appalling contracts for the delivery of things that they hadn’t quite worked out, a massive industry in allowance farming and petty corruption of the kind detailed above and some difficult conflict of interest issues. But they have, apparently, still managed to do ok at the pointy end.

I would be interested to know (a) whether they do, in fact, mess up more often than anyone else in the public sector, (b) whether they just notice messes a bit better, (c) whether there are institutional factors (rank systems, group solidarity, the complexity of the activity etc) that lead to less than desirable outcomes. And, yes, I will probably spend the next weekend looking at the Auditor-General and Inspector-General of Defence material trying to find an answer.

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt10:02 am 31 Jul 07

Private companies are good at meeting requirements in ways that suit them. Sloppy contracts and poorly defined requirements are usually a recipe for disaster (for the orgainsation procuring the service, anyway).

Sorry caf. Will attempt to appease your syntax next time.

Well that’s odd – I thought outsourcing was all the rage because private companies were more efficient than government.

Funny story though.

Is it too much to ask for a little bit of proofreading before you post an article? The third paragraph is a nightmare to read. And if you’re not sure of a spelling of a word, why not LOOK IT UP IN A GODDAMN DICTIONARY instead of writing (sp?) after it??

PS: Monday mornings also make one cranky.

Its my job to read news sites on a daily basis.

Sweet eh ?

The military has again conveniently allowed itself to be ‘one step’ away from the blame.

Slapstick contracts with civvie organisations will give you that benefit I suppose.

D’oh!

Yeah, apparently the Army vehicles at Duntroon are all taken care of by a civilian contractor, and the ‘alledged’ thief was previously employed by the same contractor.

Good to hear you are giving up the cancer sticks.

Its probably all the civilian outsourcing defence has done which led to the above mentioned cockup.

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