strategic reform - a cook's view

In another time, another world, the words 'strategic reform program' would probably send me to sleep. Defence's overall plan for SRP (we do love a good acronym to throw around like confetti) has been the talk of the town for the past few months, and with its implementation will come various changes, most of which will no doubt irritate the old boys' club.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no expert on reform, let alone strategic reform, or even Defence strategic reform. However, I've been around for long enough to acknowledge that the kind of people that bang on about 'the good old days' and how they're over, are exactly the sort of people that wouldn't necessarily hold back, yet wouldn't exactly embrace changes to the status quo. No matter how strategic they may or may not appear to be.

What I found particularly amusing the other day is that one of the agencies responsible for supervising the implementation of SRP is Defence funded, and has supposedly fudged budget predictions to show false or exaggerated numbers relating to proposed savings. I don't know how you'd be able to prove either way whether proposed savings are realistic or not, because it's essentially all conjecture. I think that if actual changes were rolled out and then the data relating to real savings came out from that, it would be slightly more encouraging to the general public.

Defence is a massive organisation in Australia, and as with any business, the little savings that can be made every day don't seem as important or noticeable as slashes to departmental budgets or staff cuts. I believe that we've probably gone for too long thinking in this mindset, and because we're such a large group of people, we have the numbers that mean if the majority of individuals take some positive action most days, it really can make a difference.

With all that said, I have a few suggestions that could contribute to savings for Defence. I don't imagine they'll actually get considered let alone implemented, but you know, I've been saying for a while that if I had my own military, I would run things quite differently. :)

1. Once a month, across all Defence establishments, run a vegetarian-only day. If my base is a typical example of meals that are offered in accordance to SUPMAN (Defence policy on food entitlements), every meal period has a choice of five meat dishes and one vegetarian dish. One of those meat dishes is usually a roast of some kind. Meat is expensive, and not a compulsory requirement for one's daily nutritional intake. Even if the roast choice was changed so that the slab of meat could be used for the equivalent of two or three other dishes, there would be significant savings, as well as a greater appreciation for when a roast dish is available.
2. Remove valuable Defence members from inflight kitchens, and outsource the provision of sandwiches, morning teas, inflight meals, barbecue packs, etc. to civilian contractors. The amount of money that is invested in training deployable catering staff which is then wasted by tying them up with tasks that civilians are capable of doing is indicative of the irrationality that governs certain Defence resources.
3. Buy in enough raw ingredients to produce sweets for all meals. At the moment we don't usually have the staff time available for constant large-scale sweets production, but if you compare the cost of having a permanent sweets position versus buying in frozen sweets to cut up and garnish, the former may actually be cheaper in the long run. One of my colleagues believes we should just spend the money on buying in individual frozen sweets that don't require cutting/garnishing/plating, but his method saves Defence catering time, while my idea cuts down on the cost spent on sweets.
4. While I'm on the sweets thing, perhaps there should be a review of what SUPMAN has to say about having sweets available for lunch and dinner. Is cake really an essential part of one's daily diet? Even back in rookies, when we were exercising most days of the week, we were advised to take it easy with the dessert bar. Imagine what some people are like once they have moved into more sedentary roles, and still have the same access to sweets and ice cream? I don't think it would kill anyone to have a sweets-free day once in a while, or to only have sweets available with lunch or dinner, but not both.

These are only a few ideas that relate to catering, which I've managed to come up with straight off the bat. I'll mull over a few more that may apply to more than just my section, but I figure that any change to what people eat or are allowed to eat would no doubt be unpopular. Unless they somehow find a way to feed people more.

I think that the key to improving things in the catering section is to increase the quality of the food, work on realistically altering people's expectations of what's available in 2010 and beyond, and then meet or exceed them.