Review into the treatment of women at the Australian Defence Force ...

Chapter 5: ADFA’s Role and Purpose – Recommendations 1-5This is an important working document and the Audit commends ADFA and the RIT for itscomprehensive approach. The Plan is still in its infancy having only been approved at the end of October2012. If implemented in accordance with its intent the Audit is confident the Plan will provide timely andrelevant information on the implementation and outcomes of the reform program.Recommendation 4: ADFA develop a performance framework thatincorporates the current metrics and new metrics to capture theimplementation of the recommendations contained in this report.Intent of RecommendationOngoing, visible accountability for the implementation of recommendations is vital in the achievement ofsustainable cultural change. Active monitoring of performance metrics and transparent reporting to theADF leadership demonstrates successes and enables corrective action to be taken where required.Implementation actionsThere is significant progress on this Recommendation at two levels.Firstly, the RIT has documented a cultural change approach which takes a holistic view of thevarious reviews at ADFA, including the Broderick Review but also the other Defence culture reviewsconducted in 2011 and 2012. 32 This paper, ‘Cultural Change Management at ADFA’ 33 maps relevantrecommendations against previous review recommendations 34 which remained outstanding, includingthe Grey Review (1998). 35 The paper attempts to synthesise and categorise all of the current andoutstanding recommendations into themes and align them with change initiatives. The paper givesan update and overview of activities as at September 2012. Other documents provided to the Auditoutline the system requirements to support the implementation of recommendations including learningmanagement systems, complaints tracking and records. 36 These are sound approaches to ensuringimplementation is comprehensive, cohesive and minimises duplication of effort.Secondly, more detailed progress on each recommendation is tracked on a performance matrix andforms the basis for discussions between the RIT, ADFA and senior leadership. The performance matrixalso connects the recommendations with Pathway to Change, the Defence, ADFA and RIT leads, actionsto date and status.Further, the performance matrix identifies a ‘longer term impact’ for each recommendation. Thisis a commendable development as it identifies the outcome the recommendation is intending toachieve. The Audit suggests that this could be the basis of communications around the intent of therecommendations. The Audit also suggests that ADFA consider developing key performance indicatorsor appropriate measures which can indicate and communicate the extent to which these outcomes havebeen achieved.A risk matrix has also been applied at two levels. At the macro level, the ‘Broderick ReviewRecommendation Implementation Risk Matrix’ identifies a number of high order implementation risksincluding lack of resourcing and/or lack of support and identifies mitigation strategies. It is unclear to30