New SUI Checklist

[UWONGO2]

I'm on a SUI inspection team so I've been looking at the new SUI checklists. I understand the push towards uniformity throughout the organization and recognizing not all wings have inspection experts. I suspect the varying degree of the quality of inspections has led us to a standardized checklist.

http://capmembers.com/cap_national_hq/inspector_general/sui/

I've spoken with my wing's IG and he explained that with the new checklists, you can only ask the questions provided. Again, I understand the push to standardization but when I reviewed the questions we were allowed to ask, I was a bit shocked at how sparse the list is.

For example, for the B-1 Cadet Programs tab, there are four questions. That's it! The questions are: Did members sent to actives lasting more than four nights get RST, were senior members present at all activities, are fluid replacement and workload limitations enforced during all cadet activities, did all HAAs have an approved CAPF 54.

Given the complexity of the cadet program, I don't see how this provides an accurate status of the unit's CP to higher headquarters. Answer yes or N/A to all four of those and you get a successful! In fact, I suppose you can have an outstanding, I mean, you were a 100% compliant!

At the top of the form there is a place to provide a "mission rating" for the cadet program in the areas of Leadership, Aerospace, Fitness and Character Development. How on earth am I supposed to provide a rating if I can't ask any questions about them?

I've never felt inspection teams should show up with wrenches and hammers and completely tear a unit apart in search of discrepancies, but I just fail to see how a few questions that really don't pertain at all to the successful operation of a program ensures or even suggests unit compliance.

[Eclipse]

For example, for the B-1 Cadet Programs tab, there are four questions. That's it! The questions are: Did members sent to actives lasting more than four nights get RST, were senior members present at all activities, are fluid replacement and workload limitations enforced during all cadet activities, did all HAAs have an approved CAPF 54.

Given the complexity of the cadet program, I don't see how this provides an accurate status of the unit's CP to higher headquarters. Answer yes or N/A to all four of those and you get a successful! In fact, I suppose you can have an outstanding, I mean, you were a 100% compliant!

No, you are compliant - successful, move on.  Seriously, the grades are meaningless and this is some acknowledgement of that.

NHQ is asking what they care about from a top-level perspective, much of what was in the SUIs from a quality perspective is now in the QCA
or SoM award.

The issue was that SUIs were being treated as root-canal-level opportunities for people to try and drive unit operations from the back seat
after the fact, while creating immense paperwork piles that no one ever read.  Inspections were so inconsistent that they were actually
defeating their own purpose - a randomly well-informed, experienced inspector might hold an better-then-average unit to the full letter
and give them a sat when they deserved better, and a poorly-informed FNG inspector might give mondo grades to unit everyone knew
were weeks from closing - that is little incentive to the go-getters, and reinforcement of failed programs, making it hard to push change.


1 millions years ago, someone well-intentioned wanted the SUIs to be mentoring opportunities, but they didn't factor in that the
inspectors would be less informed then the people they were inspecting, resulting in arguments over minutia by people who hadn't
even read the teg they were trying to enforce.  (Seriously, BTDT), Nor that the process had effectively zero teeth when
you're "lucky I showed up at all" and already ignoring rules.  Factor in the failure of inspectors to follow the rules themselves, and
an inclined commander could simply "out response" the process until their term was up or the next inspection.  Total waste of time.

An SUI is supposed to be a snap shot of unit operations with an eye towards compliance, not quality, just like the wing-level CIs.
In fact, everyone would be better served if they used the same terminology for all levels, maybe someday they will.

Ask, answer, move on.  In most cases, the inspections can be handled over the phone.

[lordmonar]

As Eclipse said....the SUI are compliance inspections.   The Checklist is NHQ hot button items or important items that ALL units must meet to be COMPLIANT.

It is not the IG's job to make sure a unit's Programs are innovative, engaging or exciting.    That would be the squadron commander's job with the oversight and assistance of the wing and group program officers.

[UWONGO2]

As Eclipse said....the SUI are compliance inspections.   The Checklist is NHQ hot button items or important items that ALL units must meet to be COMPLIANT.

I completely agree, which is why I support NHQ making every SUI be operated the same way.

It is not the IG's job to make sure a unit's Programs are innovative, engaging or exciting.    That would be the squadron commander's job with the oversight and assistance of the wing and group program officers.

I agree with you, although I didn't think my comments suggested the IG's job was anything other than checking for compliance.

I think were things might get sticky again is that each checklist has a "mission rating" section where one or more aspects of that particular part of the program is rated. The best I can tell, there is zero direction on how the rating is supposed to be obtained.

To use cadet programs as the example again, the following for items are supposed to be rated "far exceeds mission requirements" to "does not meet mission requirements":

• Cadet Program curriculum and activities for Leadership
• Cadet Program curriculum and activities for Aerospace
• Cadet Program curriculum and activities for Fitness
• Cadet Program curriculum and activities for Chactor Development

As an inspector, I have no way of determining which rating should be given as I'm not allowed to ask about them anything but the questions provided and none of the four questions I am allowed to ask touch on any of these. I'd mark them N/A if I could since I have absoultely no way of knowing.

I'm with Eclipse on the grading system, it's far too olympic ice skating for me. Either you are in compliance or you're not.

An SUI is supposed to be a snap shot of unit operations with an eye towards compliance, not quality, just like the wing-level CIs.
In fact, everyone would be better served if they used the same terminology for all levels, maybe someday they will.

Again to use cadet programs as an example, there are a lot of "shall" and "will" in the regulation, yet there is nothing available in the SUI to determine if those shalls and wills are being adeared to. If you look at the CI worksheet, it simply repeats the same exact four questions with a couple of extra questions about CAC thrown in. If compliance was being checked higher up the food chain, that would be fine, but with this new arrangement nothing is being checked at any level.

As I previously stated, I don't think SUIs should be some sort of horrible body cavity search. But this snapshot of a unit is so horribly incomplete, it seems a waste of time to even conduct them.

I understand the SUIs as we were doing them were headaches for the units being inspected. I was hoping a standerdized checklist would make life a bit better, but I wasn't expecting the inspection process to be completely gutted as to be nearly worthless. I can't tell you how often during a SUI I would show someone a regulation that they were violating and be told, "I had no idea that was in there." Mark it down as a discrepency, the unit figures out they have to make a minor change, and without anyone getting 50 lashes we have a unit that's running slightly better. There's very little chance of that happening under this new system.

Even with SUIs, we see a lot of units operating outside of what is allowed. Now that we aren't really looking at all for compliance, I fear that some units, even with the best of intentions, will really go off the rails.

[lordmonar]

As part of the SUI team....you can certainly pull the E-service records.....the ones that they use for SoM and SoD and Quality Unit.

I agree that you should give NHQ feed back that you can't do your job with only these SUI checklist questions.

[EMT-83]

I don't agree with the statement that you can only follow a written script. Ask all the questions you want, but make sure your rating is based on the published criteria.

[UWONGO2]

It was my wing's IG who stated only the questions provided could be asked, he learned this information while attending the IG college. He is however going to follow-up with NHQ and ask for clarification.

The more data that goes into eSerivices, the fewer records the units will need to provide during an inspection which is also a big bonus. Unfortunately, not everything is in eServices yet and sometimes you just need to document what you're up to for compliance proof.

Group/Wing staffers are going to have to pick up the slack ensuring compliance within their areas of responsibility. Of course, if they were doing that properly to begin with, the SUIs wouldn't be necessary.

[Private Investigator]

Group/Wing staffers are going to have to pick up the slack ensuring compliance within their areas of responsibility. Of course, if they were doing that properly to begin with, the SUIs wouldn't be necessary.

In a perfect world yes. But how many Master Staff types never had a deputy or an assistant and that 'know it all' Master Staff guy/gal one day just died and all that knowledge left the Unit and checked into "Post Everlasting"? 

[UWONGO2]

I've done some more checking around with the experts and it looks like I did misunderstand the portion about only asking the questions provided. You can ask away on whatever you want, just that any discrepancies that come up that are not part of the checklist questions are denoted for HHQ and are not counted against the squadron when it comes to the rating (just like EMT-83 said). I can live that with that, it reduces the administrative burden on the squadron to respond to discrepancies while alerting HHQ there is an issue to be addressed without anybody getting flogged.

Additionally, any questions can be asked when attempting to determine a mission rating. Again, if a discrepancy is found that isn't addressed within the listed checklist, denote it for HHQ and move on.

Kicking more of compliance issues up to group or wing is definitely going to create more work for them, but at the same time it will get them more involved at the squadron level ensuring these types of issues don't arise the next time a SUI comes around.

I'm leaning towards this approach being a step in the right direction. I'd still like to see better training documentation for the new process though.

[Eclipse]

I've done some more checking around with the experts and it looks like I did misunderstand the portion about only asking the questions provided. You can ask away on whatever you want, just that any discrepancies that come up that are not part of the checklist questions are denoted for HHQ and are not counted against the squadron.

Why.

Bother?

Kicking more of compliance issues up to group or wing is definitely going to create more work for them, but at the same time it will get them more involved at the squadron level ensuring these types of issues don't arise the next time a SUI comes around.

Compliance issues were always "kicked to HHQ" - that's their job, and if they aren't aware of a unit's deficiencies before the inspection,
they aren't going to be inclined to care afterwards, either, since there is no mechanism to require compliance.

Ask what you will, but don't waste people's time or overburden yourself, or the unit staffers, unnecessarily
with interrogatives no one cares about.