PM Interviews H. Lee Buchanan, Navy Acquisition Executive - Interview

Program Manager, March, 2000

"Competition is the Best Way to Get Value"

John Douglass left the Navy acquisition community in good hands when he ceded his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition to H. Lee Buchanan Oct. 2, 1998. A former Naval flight officer, senior physicist, and experienced director of numerous advanced research projects/agencies, Lee Buchanan's appointment as Navy Acquisition Executive was a direct result of DoD's continuing efforts to find and place "movers and shakers" in key acquisition positions who would lead, question, innovate, and "rev up" the pace of acquisition reform.

A quick read of Buchanan's ambitious 1999-2004 Strategic Plan (http://www.hq.navy.mil/RDA/stratplan.htm) reveals a Navy acquisition community that is working very hard to establish a blend of shipbuilding and moderization programs that allow today's Navy to maximize benefits from current platforms while "buying smart" for the future. Further, he and his talented workforce are striving to institutionalize new procurement mechanisms that will meet or exceed DoD's acquisition reform goals at a pace that staggers the imagination. All this in the midst of the greatest upheaval in recruiting and acquisition the Navy has ever experienced.

In February, Gibson "Gib" LeBoeuf, Deputy Director, Navy International Programs and former DSMC Navy Chair, interviewed Buchanan in his Pentagon office. Buchanan's responses reveal a man who seeks openness and readiness in everything he articulates or signs into Policy. He wants to communicate fully and openly with Congress, industry, the warfighters, and acquisition professionals; and do everything it takes to make sure Sailors and Marines are provided with the safest, most dependable, and highest-performance equipment available within fiscal constraints. How does he plan to do this? With lots of help and support, he acknowledges.

Q What plans (hopes, dreams, expectations, etc.) do you have for Navy acquisition going into the new millennium?

A When I came into office about a year ago, my first priority was to infuse the techniques of commercial business management into Navy acquisition. The two are different in many ways, of course -- the Navy is not a business, and it would be wrong to contort it into one. But I found that the Navy was very slow to embrace too many beneficial commercial ideas.

Among the things we've worked on is to develop a small, common, and actionable set of performance metrics to use in assessing all ACAT [Acquisition Category] I & II Programs. This has been quite a lot of work but well worth the effort, both as a means for identifying potential problem areas, as well as helping to point the way to a strategy for recovery. We have been conducting these reviews about every six months, and I feel pretty good about the discipline that we are building.

As a next step, I would like to create a small, dedicated team of our most experienced managers to directly aid program management staffs with special needs and circumstances by providing in-house advice and consulting. In addition, I am very excited by the progress of our Program Manager Wargame series. These are direct simulations of complex program environments, replete with all the challenges of a real program compressed into only a few days. The few we have done have been very successful not only as a training tool, but also as a way to experiment with new strategies and techniques.

The harvesting of technology has been another focus. The Navy's future will depend on its ability to implement emerging technologies faster than its adversaries. I am not very satisfied that we have paid enough attention to this. One step in this direction was made when we established Dr. Jim DeCorpo as the Chief Technology Officer. We still need to provide him the "teeth" and influence to make the infusion of new technology as important as schedule and budget.

In the same way we have focused a great deal of effort on Interoperability -- at all levels: system with system, platform with platform, Service with Service, and ally with ally. About six months ago we established Rear Admiral Kate Paige as Chief Engineer and charged her with making interoperability a priority not by fixing problems after the fact, but by preventing them early in the acquisition process.

None of these is finished, of course, but all are well begun, and I hope to give each enough momentum to persist in the new administration.

Q Assuming acquisition reform is not one final ultimate mate goal, but rather a constantly evolving mission that changes with new missions and goals, how will you ensure further success? How will you continue to implement changes already made under acquisition reform?

A To me, acquisition reform is really the process of getting back to basics -- the efficient transformation of money into effective warfighting capability. The rub is in that word "effective," which is ultimately and completely defined by the threat. During the Cold War, we built up a very ornate process for acquisition that was just right for countering the Soviet Bloc. That threat changed, but our process did not. So in my mind, the task of "acquisition reform" is to strip away anything and everything of the current process that gets in the way of meeting the new threat -- whether that means the way we establish requirements, gather and evaluate new ideas, manage our programs, or maintain the fleet.