Defence Delivery Agency will bring significant reform not past mistakes, pledges Conroy

The upcoming Defence Delivery Agency is expected to take responsibility for around $35 billion of defence spending, move around 10,000 roles into a dedicated delivery organisation and operate with greater budget independence as well as direct accountability to ministers. In addition, it's expected to have separate capability development from capability delivery to improve discipline, project management and acquisition outcomes.

“There’s a bit of sort of myths out there about what the DDA are and what these reforms are and what they’re not. They are not DMO 2.0. So anyone who argues this is DMO 2.0 is either being mischievous or hasn’t read the detail. It is much more significant. And it’s much more significant for a number of reasons,” he said.

“One, we’re moving $35 billion of the just under $60 billion defence budget out of the Department of Defence directly in acquisition and through the services of sustainment into the Defence Delivery Agency, which will be the premier project management organisation in the country. So that’s really important. And around – ball park – 10,000 people will move or 10,000 roles will move to this new agency. So it’s huge. Like, it compares to the Tange reforms. That’s point number one.

“Secondly, direct funding. So people control its budget, its operational budget and it’s capital budget. So we’ll have funding independence from Defence, so the National Arms Director will have the ability to run these projects like a commercial project manager.

“Thirdly, direct lines of accountability to the two ministers. Instead of the DMO CEO reporting to the secretary, he will report directly and be accountable directly to the defence minister and the minister for defence industry. That makes it much more independent and very different from the DMO.

“And then there’s the second part of the reforms, which is unifying capability development under the vice chief of the defence force, bringing it in from its current fragmented silo approach under the services and reversing what I thought were quite catastrophic reforms through the One Defence reform process.

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“So that capability development phase complements the delivery phase, and then we have two single people accountable – capability development owned by the VCDF – and capability delivery owned by the NAD, and they’re the two people who will be driving this process. So it’s much more significant than previous reforms. And it will drive better costings, better advice from day zero on commercial and industrial acquisition strategies and change discipline. Change kills projects, kills schedules. We need change discipline that will do that, as well as a stronger focus on understanding why we’re doing development projects sometimes.”

In growth areas, Conroy declared that Australia was making significant progress in autonomous systems, counter-drone and drone technology as well as maritime industrial capacity.

Robert Dougherty

Robert is a senior journalist who has previously worked for Seven West Media in Western Australia, as well as Fairfax Media and Australian Community Media in New South Wales. He has produced national headlines, photography and videography of emergency services, business, community, defence and government news across Australia. Robert graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, Majoring in Public Relations and Journalism at Curtin University, attended student exchange program with Fudan University and holds Tier 1 General Advice certification for Kaplan Professional. Reach out via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via LinkedIn.