You make good generic points J, but there has been nothing like the level of change coming in the pst.
de&s has already had a fair few high paid industry 'high performance' outsiders employed - and its entirely accurate to say they are far from head and shoulders above their mil and civil counterparts. infact the opposite.
Putting a new limb on a diseased and dying body, doesn't reinvigorate the body. I wouldn't put anyone up against the corporate inertia and outright stubborness of a large swathe of practically unemployable folks. The best in the world will always fail unless the good wood, has control of its destiny and that is what goco is designed to do. In my own case, I had the pleasure of effectively replacing a large number of IPT's before they were called that, plus a bunch of support command, RAFSEE, administrators and the like - and we delivered a service with half the repair at massively lower costs. We didn't play politics, we didn't care about the past, we didn't care about defending little empires and we pretty much started all over again and threw away old constructs. It can be done - but it remains to be seen if MOD is actually capable of doing its part.
it is naive to assume that cost pressures at mod are just down to internal management - cost cutting has been very real, rendering previous budgetary assumptions invalid, forcing otherwise on time projects to be delayed. the NAO reports admit this, if you can wade through their orherwise amatuerish dialogue.
While there are elements of truth in your statement, a whole lot of the truth is that MOD have overspent year on year against every estimate they ever produce, by any measure they chose and the recent situation is the first time that MOD have had to actually suffere the consequences of their actions.
so how much govt oversight of this goco again? i really want to see this explained. i really think it will really lead to anyone with any experience in this area to mutter 'oh sh*t'
Nobody knows yet but based upon MOD experience and ability, as little oversight, or as the rest of the world calls it, naked interference, as possible would be the best thing.
I wouldn't trust pretty much anyone alive in UK MOD today to do anything important to time cost and quality. Frankly there is nobody in Abbeywood even remotely competent to say what 'good oversight' looks like. Its like asking the unnumerate to run up a budget or the illiterate to write a book on writing poetry. People at Abbeywoood should no more be consulted that shoplifters should be consulted on store layouts. They may have been in a shop but know sfa about how they should be run. They may consider themselves to be competent at something but time, cost, quality and 'to spec' are none of them.
They say 'oh sh*t' so often, it should be the cap badge of the Abbeywood 'battalion'.