Tinker leads the way with best practices Published May 29, 2015 By Kimberly Woodruff Staff Writer TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- The 72nd Air Base Wing has benchmarked two programs under the new Air Force Inspection System with Risk-based Inspections and a Self-Assessment Program. Former 72nd ABW Inspector General, retired Lt. Col. Chris Parry and Larry Miller, director of Inspections, authored an article in the October 2014 TIG Brief entitled, "Risk-Based Inspections, A Focusing Approach," and it laid out the plan for the Commander's Inspection Program and noted it is much more than copying "the old way of doing things." Col. Christopher Azzano, former 72nd Air Base Wing commander, directed that the wing be on a constant state of mission readiness through a rigorous yet sustainable inspection schedule given the limited manpower. Under the colonel's direction, which correlated with assessed risk, the IG now inspects units at different intervals: some quarterly, some semi-annually and others as often as needed. Determination of the frequency of inspections comes from result scores from factors such as percent concurrency and quality of the unit's SAPs, the ratio of Management Internal Control Toolset observations to CCIP and external inspection discrepancies, and the number of undetected critical and significant discrepancies from CCIP and other inspections. "With more frequent, smaller inspections, the IGI team can deliver just-in-time focused inspections with lower overhead when compared with large multiple week long inspections with large numbers of Wing Inspection Team participants," said Mr. Miller. "Additionally, the IGI team can give more constant and timely feedback to the units and to the wing commander." Another benchmark, the Self-Assessment Program, answers the question of how to inspect and optimize the organization's performance while balancing limited inspection resource demands. In another TIG Brief article written by Colonel Parry, "Is Your Unit 'SAP Strong' A Method to Assess Self-Assessment Program Health," the effort of identifying a unit's ability to find, analyze, report and fix deficiencies, is primarily executed through the SAP documented primarily in MIC-T. The 72nd Air Base Wing Inspector General's office proposed method is called, the 'Observation of Deficiency Ratio,' and helps the commander have a fairly accurate and quick assessment while providing the right motivations to the units for SAP improvement if warranted. "The 72nd Air Base Wing has validated the usefulness of this simple, yet powerful metric in several inspections. Units with a strong ratio showing aggressive self-identification have fairly 'clean' inspections," said the former IG. The takeaway is when units have strong SAPs, they are better able to meet the objectives in the Air Force Inspection System and are better prepared to be highly effective in their performance and achieving AFIS objective of Mission Readiness equals Inspection Readiness. New 72nd ABW Commander Col. Stephanie Wilson and new IG Lt. Col. Trisha Luiken are now leading the way, ensuring the wing stays ahead of the game.