The Department of the Navy on Wednesday released its newest business operations plan, which was designed to tie into the National Defense Strategy (NDS) and continue to reform the department.
The plan, covering FY 2019-2021, is couched in terms of the NDS and the FY 2019-2022 National Defense Business Operations Plan and acts as a framework for the Navy’s management agenda. It focuses on three lines of effort: rebuilding readiness, strengthening alliances, and reforming department business practices.
Under Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly will lead implementation of the plan as Chief Management Officer (CMO) for the department.
Modly told reporters in a press call Wednesday that the department is planning to do an assessment every three months of how it is doing against the milestones in the plan, and adjust those milestones.
Every six months the department will update the entire plan and republish a new version, then every year update it again more formally like for this release.
“So next year, this time, we’ll be able to give you a retrospective of what we did over the past 12 months and then looking forward, adding a whole other year into the timeline of the plan,” Modly said.
Modly noted he will be very involved in executing and monitoring the plan.
“I’m looking for us to hit our milestones and also for adding new initiatives to it and abandoning initiatives that don’t make sense in the context of our strategy,” he said.
Modly said, “if we’re able to execute this plan, the end result is a more agile and accountable entity, which means that we are able to understand our costs better.”
Modly noted executing the plan will not require investing extra funds, but he expects this to “actually free up funds” to allow the Navy to invest in the department’s war-fighting areas.
“Basically everything’s that in this plan has already been budgeted. Over time, we hope to free up capital through the execution of the plan so that we can support the war-fighter,” he added.
For example, Modly said as the Navy drives down business system maintenance costs by migrating to more consolidated and modern systems, the department thinks it will save money.
Modly said the department does not have any initial estimates on savings, but the next phase in the business plan “is to take a look to quantify measurable things that we can drive toward in terms of savings.”
He also said the plan should help uncover areas for which the department may require legislative action, including budget-related items.
“Part of the value of having a tool like this is that it discovers and uncovers areas that we may need to have legislative relief for. Right now, in this first version, we didn’t find any of those areas,” Modly said.
As the plan and strategy change over time and the department makes decisions on pieces that do not make sense, Modly said this may require the department to ask Congress for legislative changes.
Modly said this plan should help the Navy Department “communicate to the Congress exactly why we’re asking for that legislative relief because then we refer back to this document.”