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Procurement a 'strategic pillar' in shake up of UK defence

17 Aug 2010

Source: People’s Daily

British Defence Secretary Liam Fox has announced a major shake-up in the Ministry of Defence which will see it reorganized into three "strategic pillars."

Fox told an audience at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in Westminster that he was launching a full review of how the Ministry of Defence is run and how the three armed services can be reformed to "produce more efficient provision of defense capability, and generation and sustainability of operations."
Fox said the Ministry of Defence would be reorganized into the three pillars of Policy and Strategy, the Armed Forces, and Procurement and Estates.

He stressed that a logical management structure would be " foreign policy leading to a defence strategy, then portfolio management which identified capability gaps, followed by specific program identification and finally physical procurement."

The new three-pillar structure is designed to make this easier and to stop the constant over-specification and then re- specification of programs which has led to cost overruns and program delays, said Fox.  A new Defense Reform Unit would carry out the reform, he added.

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