Australia — Government agreement to progress two major Defence Capability Projects

The Min­is­ter for Defence, Stephen Smith, and Min­is­ter for Defence Materiel, Jason Clare today announced that the Gov­ern­ment has giv­en approval to progress two major Aus­tralian Defence Force (ADF) capa­bil­i­ty projects.

These two projects com­bined are esti­mat­ed to involve expen­di­ture of up to $1 bil­lion by the time they are complete. 

Joint Project 2072 Phase 2B – Bat­tle­space Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sys­tem (Land): First Pass 

The Gov­ern­ment has giv­en first pass approval to Joint Project 2072 Phase 2B, which is aimed at pro­vid­ing the ADF with a next gen­er­a­tion telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work capa­bil­i­ty. This capa­bil­i­ty will pro­vide a mod­ern, deploy­able com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem that enables the trans­mis­sion of infor­ma­tion over a range of wired and wire­less net­work­ing ser­vices, such as radios, satel­lite and com­put­er servers and terminals. 

Joint Project 2072 Phase 2B is cost capped between $100 mil­lion and $500 mil­lion. The Gov­ern­ment is expect­ed to make a final deci­sion on approval for the project in the peri­od 2012–13 to 2014–15.

The abil­i­ty to access and exchange large amounts of mul­ti­me­dia data is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant for the effec­tive con­duct of mod­ern com­bat operations. 

This Project will enable Army and ele­ments of the Air Force to replace age­ing mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture ser­vices and pro­vide com­man­ders with an increased lev­el of sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness, com­mand and con­trol and infor­ma­tion shar­ing capability. 

This equip­ment will great­ly enhance Defence’s abil­i­ty to use mod­ern infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy to link sen­sors, weapon sys­tems, com­man­ders and per­son­nel in a net­worked environment. 

Joint Project 2080 Phase 2B.1 – Fund­ed Project Def­i­n­i­tion Study for Defence Per­son­nel Sys­tems Mod­erni­sa­tion

The Gov­ern­ment has giv­en approval for the Depart­ment of Defence to con­duct pre-first pass analy­sis to inves­ti­gate the costs and risks asso­ci­at­ed with stream­lin­ing and improv­ing its human resources and pay­roll sys­tems for mil­i­tary and civil­ian personnel. 

The Defence Per­son­nel Sys­tems Mod­erni­sa­tion (DPSM) project is a major Defence project and crit­i­cal part of the Strate­gic Reform Pro­gram. It will pro­vide a sin­gle, uni­fied human resources and pay­roll system. 

It is also expect­ed to improve the admin­is­tra­tion of human resources and pay­roll with­in Defence and enable major reforms in key busi­ness sup­port areas such per­son­nel admin­is­tra­tion, career man­age­ment, edu­ca­tion and train­ing, work­force plan­ning and enter­prise report­ing. Some key ben­e­fits antic­i­pat­ed from the project include enhanced self-ser­vice capa­bil­i­ty and report­ing, increased automa­tion and greater supportability. 

Joint Project 2080 Phase 2B.1 is cost capped between $100 mil­lion and $500 mil­lion.

Defence will now report to Gov­ern­ment in Finan­cial Year 2011-12 on its require­ments and imple­men­ta­tion options with a vital require­ment being the inte­gra­tion of the mil­i­tary pay­roll capa­bil­i­ty into Defence’s core per­son­nel man­age­ment sys­tem, which is cur­rent­ly used to pay over 20 000 Defence civil­ian employees. 

Mr Smith’s Office: Andrew Porter 0419474392
Mr Clare’s Office: Kore­na Flana­gan 0418 251 316
Depart­ment of Defence: (02) 6127 1999 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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