Doctor, it hurts when I do this …

Defense AT&L, Sept-Oct, 2009 by Alan Haggerty, Roy Wood

Despite Herculean efforts and decades of acquisition "reform," defense acquisition is in big trouble. There is a groundswell of discontent from within and outside the Department of Defense. On Jan. 27, 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying, "Entrenched attitudes throughout the government are particularly pronounced in the area of acquisition: a risk-averse culture, a litigious process, parochial interests, excessive and changing requirements, budget churn and instability, and sometimes adversarial relationships within the Department of Defense and between DoD and other parts of government. ... Thus the situation we face today, where a small set of expensive weapons programs has had repeated--and unacceptable--problems with requirements, schedule, costs and performance."

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There have been more than 100 studies of the acquisition system since World War II, yet many of the improvements seem to make things worse. Few things in the system seem to be working well--from requirements to sustainment--and many things aren't working at all. For half a century, the acquisition system has been poked and prodded and reformed around the edges. Perhaps it is time to revisit some of the basic assumptions about what makes a good system and good programs--and good management.

While this article won't address every problem, there appear to be three ideas that receive much of the blame and are at the root of much of the controversy: bureaucracy, stovepiped systems, and inter-Service rivalry. Contrary to popular sentiment, we are in favor of all three. Please, let us explain.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracies are made up of people, and those people are the operators of a complex government machine. When they work effectively toward clearly articulated strategic goals, competent bureaucracies can ensure consistency and quality and provide stability and order. Without an effective bureaucracy, there would be chaos and anarchy.

A major problem with the defense acquisition bureaucracy is that it has systematically replaced its most talented and capable bureaucrats and institutions with a rules-based, policy-driven oversight machine. In the exuberance following the end of the Cold War, DoD downsized the acquisition community and lost much of the government's acquisition talent pool. At the same time, the acquisition reform movement downplayed the government's role, turning much of the technical and management (or, dare we say it, leadership) responsibility over to defense industry. The government acquisition community was treated as the source of the problems. Any excellence that existed was devalued, downsized, contracted out, and lost.

In hindsight, replacing an expertise-based bureaucracy with more rules and policy does not appear to be working. That has been the situation for two decades. As noted in the July-August 2009 Defense AT&L article "Breaking the Camel's Back" by J. Krieger and R. Wood:

  DoD operates under mountains of guidance and oversight. Since 1994,
  Title VIII of the National Defense Authorization Act has added more
  than 500 sections of acquisition provisions. The Federal Acquisition
  Regulation contains 1,933 pages of legalese, and its companion
  document, the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement
  (DFARS) adds another 1,015 pages. Even the guidebook designed to help
  acquisition managers navigate the labyrinthine regulations and
  procedures is 520 pages. For comparison, Moby Dick is a minnow-sized
  420 pages and even Tolstoy's epic War and Peace is dwarfed at 699
  pages.

As the article further notes, "each rule and regulation was undoubtedly created over time to enshrine a good practice or prevent an egregious error, but each of those Band-Aid[R] fixes to the acquisition process has created" an unwieldy system of many checks, few balances, and little discernable benefit to positive acquisition outcomes.

For bureaucracies to work well, they need to be populated with individuals who have the technical and management expertise to make good decisions within a minimalist framework of policies and regulations. Rebuilding defense acquisition with talented people who are dedicated to success and professionally developed over long periods of service is the only viable answer to the long-term recovery of the acquisition system. Training, education, and experience requirements for major leadership assignments need to be enforced, and proven performers should be identified early and kept in the acquisition community. We also need to reestablish an emphasis on technical qualifications and specialization. Despite the current philosophy in the management community, good managers are not interchangeable and cannot run any sort of business, especially that of building cutting-edge defense systems.

Thus good people who are well-trained and experienced are the foundation to rebuilding our acquisition system bureaucracy. Perfect policy implemented by a weak bureaucracy will fail. A strong community made up of dedicated, smart, and experienced professionals, even with weak policy, will almost always succeed. Rebuilding that strong community must be a fundamental priority or everything else will fail.