In January of this year, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order 13771, which mandates “that for every one new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations be identified for elimination”[1]. The order focused on the monetized cost of compliance. It did not mention the burden of time expended in compliance, monetized or not. That Executive Order specifically excluded regulations issued with respect the military, yet the idea remains sound: Innovation is absolutely necessary.
The Navy is facing unprecedented challenges in the manpower and personnel arena. Among the challenges are a shrinking fiscal environment, adapting to the expectations and changing perspective brought into the Navy by “millennial” Sailors, the need for speed and precision in matching people to job vacancies (called “billets”), the reality that maintaining manpower and personnel-related legacy information technology (IT) systems impedes strategic IT investment, and the reality that the cost of manpower is the largest component of the Navy budget.[2]
Considering these realities, the idea of increased innovation in the areas of administrative, manpower and personnel-related makes sense. This arena represents the low-hanging fruit, because gains can be made with the stroke of a pen, figuratively and perhaps literally.
As illustrated by the President’s Executive Order, a comparatively quick way to recoup resources quickly is to lessen administrative burdens. For example, IRS National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson estimated that Americans spend 6.1 billion hours year complying with the federal tax code[3]. With about 148.6 million individual tax returns, that works out to about 41 hours of compliance time per individual income tax filer per year. [4]
For argument’s sake, it the same administrative burden rests upon active duty Sailors and officers, and if that whole 41 hours of compliance work could be eliminated without any detriment to the force, that would save the Navy 13.0 million man-hours per year. Applying an at-sea standard Navy workweek of 84 hours for 52 weeks (that’s a long deployment!) yields 3,234 deployment man-years saved. Further, if just half of the Navy’s more than 6,000 yeomen could be cross-rated to other ratings, we would have our 12th aircraft manned.
Granted, even administrative-related innovation is not without problems. The Navy learned this first hand during its ill-fated effort to eliminate enlisted rating titles. In that case, overwhelmingly negative reaction from the fleet convinced the Navy to issue a “course correction” and a complete policy reversal.[5] One of the realities of seeking change where people are concerned is that unlike technology or processes, people can and do push back. Perhaps for similar reasons, another difficulty in making changes where people are concerned is enticing them to cooperate.
The Navy has tried to relieve administrative burdens from the fleet, perhaps most notably the initiative known as Reducing Administrative Distractions (RAD), meant to solicit feedback from Sailors and Navy civilians on how to focus their daily activities on “Warfighting First.[6]” That effort had some success, such as reducing the number of general military training (GMT) training topics and eliminating the duplicative requirements at the unit level to log completed training into an online database. By the Navy’s own admission that type of small win may seem inconsequential on its face, but multiplied across the force that type of seemingly minor win does restore time that can be used more wisely. Still, because people are involved, efforts like this will only be successful if leadership across all levels participate to identify solutions, and continue to encourage a culture of change and innovation[7].
More recently, the Navy launched “Adaptive Workforce.” Adaptive Workforce is a working group sponsored by the Department’s Task Force Innovation (TFI). It is one of three fundamental focus areas in the TFI charter (the other two are information as an asset and emerging operational capabilities). Key objectives of the Adaptive Workforce include assessing innovation in the workplace, modernizing the hiring process of Navy civil service employees, improving “community” management of the workforce, and modernizing personnel systems. [8]
The goal of the Adaptive Workforce initiative is “To attract, develop, and retain world-class talent in the 21st century, we must create a modern work environment to solve our most challenging problems of today and tomorrow. We must create risk-tolerant settings which encourage broad participation in the development of innovative ways to improve the effectiveness of the Department without fear of discouragement or personal retribution. Leaders must incentivize, recognize and mentor members of the workforce who are empowered to propose thoughtful ideas to improve the full spectrum of mission challenges—from basic day-to-day operations to creating solutions to our most strategic problems.”[9]
Assessing innovation includes efforts to reexamine how the Department of the Navy values innovators and innovative leaders. The goal is to support and encourage all Sailors, Marines, and Civilians to contribute ideas, insights, and resources which will advance the Naval Services.
The following criteria will be considered in assessing the contributions of all Officers, Senior Enlisted, and Civilian at GS-13 and above: Develop innovative ideas to improve the organization, champion innovative ideas of the workforce, determine how well individuals help create an environment which fosters innovation, identify and remove unnecessary bureaucratic barriers.[10]
On the technological front, the Navy has a long and storied history of technological innovation and it is deservedly proud of its accomplishments in that area. It has only recently begun to recognize that innovation of its human resource management systems can be as important to operational readiness as innovations in other areas, like weapons, weapons systems, operational platforms (ships, submarines, aircraft, unmanned systems). As noted in TFI, modernizing the manpower and personnel-related systems is vital.
Department of the Navy manpower and personnel-related systems are expansive. They impact all Sailors, whether ashore or afloat. The Navy’s universe of manpower and personnel-related systems consist of at least hundreds of applications, thousands of interfaces and hundreds of thousands of data elements. The average age of Navy manpower and personnel-related systems is 26 years, almost the age of the average Sailor[11].
To paraphrase the Secretary of the Navy, innovation can be highly disruptive and thrives in a culture which embraces innovation and risk-taking. In this period of budget and strategic uncertainty, the Navy is wise to increase resources and opportunities for innovation to rapidly bring get rid of antiquated processes that have lost their value, to adopt not just new ideas but better ones, to streamline our processes, and to bring new technologies to bear on real world problems in the manpower and personnel-systems sphere because all Sailors are impacted by it. Along the way, we must be prepared to fail during innovation efforts (no, it won’t be seamless), iterate rapidly, reassess results, and act on findings to make things better.[12]
Endnotes
[1] Executive Order No. 13771, (2017)
[2] Murphy, M. S. (2010, May). Sea Warrior program (PEO-EIS PMW 240) overview [PowerPoint presentation]. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/NavySeaWarrior/sea-warrior-program-peoeis-pmw-240-command-brief-5055577
[3] Novack, J. (2017, May 11). Tax waste: 6.1 billion hours spend complying with the federal tax code. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2011/01/05/tax-waste-6-1-billion-hours-spent-complying-with-federal-tax-code/#2e8391444149
[4] Department of the Treasury. Individual income tax returns line item estimates, 2014. Retrieved from https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/14inlinecount.pdf
[5] Larter, D. and Faram, M. (2016, December 20). Navy leaders reverse decision to eliminate sailors’ ratings. Navy Times. Retrieved from http://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/local/navy/2016/12/20/navy-leaders-reverse-decision-eliminate-sailors-ratings/95679904/
[6] Miller, S. (2014, June 6). Navy launches second round of RAD campaign. Naval District Washington Public Affairs. Retrieved from http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=81482. Also, NAVADMIN 117/14.
[7] NAVADMIN 117/14
[8] Department of the Navy. (n.d.). Adaptive workforce. [PowerPoint presentation]. Retrieved from http://www.secnav.navy.mil/innovation/Documents/2015/08/Module_6.pdf
[9] Department of the Navy. (n.d.). Adaptive workforce. [PowerPoint presentation]. Retrieved from http://www.secnav.navy.mil/innovation/Documents/2015/08/Module_6.pdf
[10] Department of the Navy. (n.d.). Adaptive workforce. [PowerPoint presentation]. Retrieved from http://www.secnav.navy.mil/innovation/Documents/2015/08/Module_6.pdf
[11] Murphy, M. S. (2010, May). Sea Warrior program (PEO-EIS PMW 240) overview [PowerPoint presentation]. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/NavySeaWarrior/sea-warrior-program-peoeis-pmw-240-command-brief-5055577; Defense Manpower Data Center (September 2008). Active duty demographic profile. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/pastinson/us-military-active-duty-demographic-profile-presentation
[12] Secretary of the Navy. (2015, October 15). Increase resources and opportunities for experimentation [Memorandum]. Washington, DC: SECNAV.
