I/ITSEC Panel Discussion Transcript Vice Adm.

Robert Burke
Orlando, Fla., Nov. 30, 2016

Thanks Admiral Robb, its great to be here. This is my first I/ITSEC. My team told me I would
be impressed by what I saw here, and they were absolutely right. But, I did want to take just a
few minutes and talk to you about Sailor 2025 and the Gold Line of Effort, part of the Design for
Maintaining Maritime Superiority. The two are, with only a very few exceptions, essentially
synonymous with each other, with very little difference. They are very intertwined and
interrelated throughout, and no matter what perspective youre looking at it from, the Gold Line
of Effort and Sailor 2025 is about our one Navy team. So thats our Sailors, both active and
reserve component, our Navy civilians, and our families.

As the Chief of Naval Personnel, Im also dual hatted as a Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for
Manpower, Personnel, Training and Education, which is unique among the services to have that
sort of organizational construct. I really have two principal bases. The first one is our Sailors,
and the second one is the Fleet. Depending on the perspective of the customer, there is one of
two things that are really focal points of Sailor 2025. For our Sailors its about flexibility, their
career choices, the opportunities to do things that make it more attractive to (a) join the Navy,
and then (b) stay in the Navy.

For our Fleet, its about readiness. Making sure that our ships are fully manned, and making sure
those ships are fully manned with properly trained Sailors. So, the right Sailors, with the right
skills, in the right billet. Ultimately, coming in the front and in the door as I pointed to earlier, is
about tracking civilians to come in and join our team. So, under the hood of things, what were
really trying to achieve is to establish a sustainable personnel system. If you really stop and think
about what were doing today in the personnel world, all the services are in the same situation,
its unsustainable. We havent fundamentally changed our personnel business model since the
draft went away. Thats been a long time. We bring in 40,000 Sailors a year and we send home
40,000 Sailor every year. We do over 90,000 permanent changes of stations moves every year.
Again, its just unsustainable, it consumes a limitless supply of people who are qualified, and
then, even more importantly, willing to come in the front door, and thats just not the case.

Today, if you look at a cross section of the American population, less than one percent of that
population is qualified, i.e., family record, things of that nature. Then if you add the propensity
factory in there, it gets down to one percent. All the services are competing for that same talent
pool as are all of you, industry. The rest of the world their looking for that same focus. So weve
got to make efforts to make the base of that pyramid much narrower, provide Sailors
opportunities and options to stay Navy , and if that means repurposing throughout a career that
will be part of the calculus.

So towards that end, Sailor 2025 really has three main lines of effort, Ill call them pillars for
lack of a better word. The first effort is just the wholesale modernization of our entire personnel
system. Everything from the under the hood process and policies, officer and enlisted promotions
and advancements and mechanisms that allow us to recognize the best and brightest and promote
them sooner. Educational opportunities for both enlisted folks and additional graduate education
opportunities for officers. Tours with industry Sailors go out and learn and bring back industry
practices. Its even customer service oriented, like how we do business at our personnel support
detachments. Were on less than a one year glide slope from going to sort of a USAA type
customer service model where 90 percent of the transactions will be done on mobile devices, and
well have call centers and things like that. Its a detailing marketplace, which is sort of a
Linked-in for our Sailors to explore and negotiate to get their upcoming job assignments.

The second major pillar, and for this group I think its one of most direct interest. Magwai
already talked about it, we talked about it a lot yesterday its Ready, Relevant Learning. Again, I
think the big point here is that we optimize training, not just street to Fleet, but we look at it as a
career continuum, thats a big part of it, and then we apply the science of learning and then bring
a whole multitude of modern training methods to bear. Not only do we have to be able to train
street to Fleet, and then provide that career continuum of training, we have to have the flexibility
to rapidly repurpose and retrain our Sailors if the need arises. Thats part of the challenge of the
design, that we be agile enough to be able to do that on short notice.

The third pillar is all about career readiness for our Sailors and their families. Its a whole
multitude of initiatives in that corner. Everything from leader development - sounds old, but we
have a new take on it. Were about to sign a new leader development framework that recognizes
that weve done a very good job over the years of talking about competency factors. So thats
leadership competency, technical or tactical competency, but weve taken for granted character.
In a communication degraded or denied environment, were going to rely on these centralized
operations more than ever. The American public puts a special trust in the Navy, and to have that
trust, you have to have impeccable character. So we do a good job at sort of a one-time
inoculation of that character, whether its the Naval Academy, in ROTC, or Recruit Training
Command, we sort of take it for granted that it doesnt atrophy overt time. Were going to put
some tools in place to make sure that doesnt. Its a civilian workforce framework that CNO
signed out about a month ago, and it charges our uniform commanders to have Navy civilians
work as part of their teams to provide those Navy civilians with the same career management
advantages we provide to our militaries. Its a developmental tool; its recognition; its career
progression, and were just getting started on that. Its the overall idea of our one Navy team.

Weve worked for decades to improve the diversity of our Navy workforce, specifically focusing
on uniform folks, and were doing fairly well on that front. Weve got work left to do, but now
were at the point of what do you do with that tremendous gift and that diversity? Weve got
diversity of background, diversity of experience, diversity of thought, which brings unique
perspectives of the way people look at problem or solutions, or articulate those problems or
solutions. So, how do we train our leaders to deliberately leverage those diverse characteristics in
their individuals that they have on their teams? Its about family friendly programs.
The Navy is a sea going service, always will be. Well have family separation and deployments;
thats part of that in the entering argument, but this is about removing obstacles that we can
control, that get in the way and negatively influence a Sailors decision to stay Navy when their
looking to start or raise a family. Things like child development center hours, Career
Intermission Program that lets folks go off and plan families, and take a time out without being
penalized in terms of promotion or advancement when they come back in. It`s things like
maternity leave, and in the future some other things along those lines. Then an overall look at
career health and wellness, and putting some teeth in the physical fitness program to make it a
real readiness assessment. Not to turn us into tri-athletes, but to just make sure that we have a
certain level of fitness that going to ensure our health and wellness over the long haul. Its a lot
of stuff going on those fronts.

At the foundation of all these initiatives though, were just wrapping up the wholesale effort to
streamline all of our processes. Weve just begun the reorganization of all the different
subordinate commands around the alignment of those processes so the processes are optimized.
Then were going to bring it all together with an information technology foundation and
leveraging commercial off-the-shelf products to develop and integrate a paid personnel system
that for first time will be integrated between active and reserve components and will enable a lot
of these customers to things out there. The other thing we want to do is make sure that integrated
personnel system supports this training and qualification DNA makeup of an individual Sailor
against the jobs that we have. We just bought Billet Based Distribution online earlier this year,
and its the first step towards that direction. This will help us do a better job of talent matching,
not just when folks come in the front door, but over the long haul as their present career moves.

Finally, we want that system to enable big data analytics so we can do meaningful forecasting
going forward. Not just in our training and readiness aspects, but in all our personnel decisions
including pay, compensation and things like this. So these are just baby steps. Were moving out
on things that we have the authority for now. Weve made significant progress. Today its about
45 initiatives in total that are living, breathing evolving list of initiatives. Where we dont have
the authority weve gone out and asked for those. We think were going to read this afternoon in
FY17 weve gained a few more on officer promotion authorities and things along those lines.
But, were grateful for the work of this entire team here.

We appreciate your partnership and we a look forward to your continued support, and I look
forward to your questions. Thanks for your time this morning.