Page 94 - Australian Defence Magazine Dec 2018 - Jan 2019
P. 94

PROJECTS
JOINT
NIGEL PITTAWAY | MELBOURNE
2018 was a busy year in the Joint projects space and particularly so for the recently-formed Joint Capabilities Group.
THE Group has recently completed a com- prehensive review of Joint projects which have now been aligned under the Divisions within the organisation in order to harness important synergies in their management.
Under the current Chief Joint Capa- bilities (CJC) Air Vice Marshal Warren McDonald, Joint Capabilities Group was formed in July 2017 as a consequence of the formation of Australian Defence Force Headquarters (ADFHQ), itself a result of the First Principles Review.
The Group is tasked with the provision of Joint Health, Logistics, Education and Training, Information Warfare, Joint
Aligning the planets Joint projects
Military Police, and Women, Peace and Security, plus the management of other agreed Joint projects and their associated sustainment. Entities within the Group include the Australian Defence College, Information Warfare Division, Joint Mil- itary Police Unit, Joint Health Command and Joint Logistics Command.
“It’s been a busy and productive year for projects in the Group, as we have assembled the project requirements of all our branches together,” AVM McDonald said to ADM. “We’ve made some significant changes as we looked at where it made sense to place the management of projects under one division.”
A good example of this is Defence’s Joint Project 2060 Phase 4 (Health Knowledge Management), which has been moved from Joint Health Command into the Informa- tion Warfare Division.
“It is an ICT-based program which Joint Health Command, given their profession- alism resides in medical and dental care, it wasn’t the logical place to manage such a project,” he explained. “It needed the con- structs that underpin major projects, so that was the reason we brought it in under the Information Warfare Division.”
A counterpoint to this is the Defence Fuel Transformation Program, which will remain under the auspices of Joint Logis- tics Command due to the logical argument that JLC has already done a lot of work on the project and well-understands the re- quirements.
“JLC is well-placed to run that pro- gram and has demonstrated so with how smoothly the project went through to Government for approval,” AVM McDon- ald added.
Case Studies – JP2060 Phase 4
Defence’s JP2060 /4 Health Knowledge Management system will replace the system currently in place, which has not performed to expectations and was the subject of Aus- tralian National Audit Office (ANAO) scru- tiny. One major shortcoming is that it cannot be used on naval assets as it cannot operate in a disconnected state. Consequently, Navy has been forced to retain paper-based medi- cal records while at sea which, AVM Mc- Donald said, is wholly unsatisfactory.
“The current system software is becom- ing redundant. The company supporting it is working with Defence to maintain the software for as long as they can, but it will reach the point where they can no longer do so. Therefore, we have to change to a more modern system that is sustainable into the future,” he explained.
94 | December 2018 – January 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
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