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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska — On Sept. 4, Gov. Sean Parnell released a 57-page report of findings from the National Guard Bureau’s Office of Complex Investigations that detailed a comprehensive analysis of multiple problems challenging the Alaska National Guard, its leadership, and its processes.
Because of concerns about the AKNG’s workplace culture, Gov. Parnell requested the investigation in a letter to the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, Gen. Frank Grass, who then initiated the investigation.
The five key areas identified by the report include sexual assault, equal-opportunity programs, coordination with law enforcement, fraud and command climate. The report also provided guidance for changes to correct these issues.
With the recommendations detailed, NGB sent the Alaska Implementation Team here, made up of four senior Guard leaders from across the country and led by Brig. Gen. Jon K. Mott, Connecticut National Guard’s assistant adjutant general, Air.
“The NGB-AIT is comprised of experts in key areas,” said Brig. Gen. Leon M. Bridges, acting adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard. “They are here to assist and advise the Alaska National Guard with implementing needed changes for us to move forward in a way that ensures our values and the well-being and confidence of our members are upheld.”
Working in conjunction with the NGB-AIT, the AKNG put together their own implementation planning teams to address the separate issues; one team each for four of the five categories identified in the OCI report and another they chose to add. The teams are AKNG Sexual Assault IPT, AKNG Equal Opportunity IPT, AKNG Law Enforcement IPT, AKNG Command Climate IPT, and the added team, AKNG Justice IPT. Fraud is being looked into by a NGB audit team for a more in-depth assessment of the issue.
The AKNG-IPTs have been tasked to develop an implementation plan based on the recommendations of the OCI report. The plan will contain details for each recommendation from the report. It will detail the desired end-state of the recommendation, required goals and objectives, milestones that are required to achieve it, metrics to measure that effort, and suspense dates required to ensure they are addressed in a timely manner.
Each week, the teams conduct meetings to discuss the plan and what needs to be done to accomplish their objectives.
“In the first meeting, we established what the goals were for the program,” said Lt. Col. David McPhetres, director of staff for the Alaska Air National Guard, who is acting as one of the managers of the AKNG IPT program. “Each team built out what their order of emphasis was, what they’re doing, what their recommendations are, how they’re measuring it and what milestones they’ve created. Those are then reported back during the Friday meeting along with a status. If there are problems that require outside assistance, it gets reported at that meeting which feeds to Brig. Gen. Mott, who then reports back to the governor.”
A rare opportunity that has arisen out of this process is that future leaders of the AKNG – from the junior enlisted Guardsman and up – have been given an opportunity to affect positive change to improve the organization, explained McPhetres.
“We opened the effort to everybody within the Guard,” he said.
The weekly team meetings are open to Guardsmen, who are invited and encouraged to participate. Like the full-time staff, traditional Guardsmen are also encouraged to attend if they can. If they cannot attend the meetings, they are still encouraged to participate by providing feedback to the AKNG-IPTs, either through their chain of command, or directly to members of the teams.
“The best way for Guardsmen to help is to be part of the solution,” said McPhetres. “If they have a recommended solution to a problem, they can share it in one of the IPTs, send it to me, a team lead, or anyone in their chain of command. The key point is that everybody is capable of identifying problems, and the challenge is that we need people to also help identify solutions.”
According to feedback from the teams, progress is already being made relating to the recommendations from the OCI report.
“The Alaska National Guard is creating a more inclusive process in regards to educating Soldiers and Airmen about promotion criteria and policies,” said Lt. Col. Wayne Don, commander of the 103rd Civil Support Team, Alaska Army National Guard, who serves as a co-lead on the AKNG Command Climate IPT. “We are increasing senior enlisted involvement in helping to educate Guard members about the selection process.”
Also, a state equal employment manager position was listed and is currently in selection process of filling that job, according to Col. Edith Grunwald, director of human resources, Alaska National Guard and lead of the AKNG Equal Opportunity IPT. Other positions are being filled as well. The 176th Wing, Alaska Air National Guard, hired a new equal opportunity director and put their part-time EO specialist on full-time orders in September.
“We have EO leaders who are already trained, but we will be training more leaders and providing new and updated information,” said Grunwald. “An EO leader from the Michigan Army National Guard will be here Monday, Oct. 20, to train our new leaders and educate members of the AKNG with new and updated information.”
Each step is one closer to improving the organization, explained McPhetres.
“We drafted a vision statement that puts us somewhere over the horizon and where we want to be,” he said. “Ultimately, whatever the result of our process is, we want a vision statement that is somewhere better than where we are today. Our next series of goals are to get our Soldiers and Airmen involved, because it’s really the grassroots piece that needs to be the foundation and needs to embrace the vision. We need our people to believe in the process, and we want them to get behind whatever it is that takes us to the vision of what’s better than today.”
| Date Taken: | 10.17.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 10.17.2014 19:48 |
| Story ID: | 145398 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, AK, US |
| Web Views: | 369 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Implementing change in the Alaska National Guard, by Edward Eagerton, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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