In terms of R. & D. projects, Congress by their own admission can only sample perhaps 10 to 15 percent of the hundreds of unrelated R. & D. projects that they are asked to review.
The Commission system would have Congress see R. & D. system candidates which warrant exploratory development in terms of their purpose, and they would see them grouped by mission areas.
Now, what does this mean for the burden of Congress? Does this mean that Congress which is already overworked and overburdened, and with limited resources, would have more work to do? Does this mean that Congress would be put in the role of second-guessing the operating agency needs? It does not.
It in fact means that Congress would have less detailed involvement. Congress would be more effective, they would disengage from the detail where they try to straighten out procurement, after the fact, and they would engage in the early high payoff areas, which are directly related to legislative responsibilities.
It strikes me that this is obviously true, you cannot duplicate broad bodies of knowledge at every level of the Government hierarchy. Congress cannot review every defense project. 10-15 percent sounds like a reasonable estimate.
He is saying that instead of reviewing R&D projects in their engineering or production design phases, when most of the cost is preset anyway, they should focus on high payoff areas in early R&D, exploratory concepts and preliminary design.
But I’m not sure it follows that Congress should get more involved in picking early technical or requirements choices that have real design implications. What makes them qualified to pick winners and losers at that stage? That only increases the number of decision makers and competing, unvalidated design choices, forced into the requirements.
However, maybe Congress should have a strong role in cancelling unpromising projects, and green-lighting others that have merit but goes against institutional biases in the services. There are many instances where innovators had to go above the heads of their bosses.
Again, project evaluation becomes the really difficult part. Its not clear that that talent should reside in Congress so far away from operations. And its not clear how the public is going to keep Congressmen and their staff accountable for R&D choices they make, let alone service executives. The outcomes of those early R&D decisions may take decades until their impact is known.
Perhaps all Congress needs is just enough evaluation talent to recognize when the services are biased, and that a project is an abject failure or that another project has real merit.
*The quote was from: TESTIMONY OF ROBERT R. JUDSON, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, COMMISSION STUDIES, COMMISSION ON GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT; ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, SYSTEMS ACQUISITION MANAGEMENT, NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL, MONTEREY, CALIF.
MAJOR SYSTEMS ACQUISITION REFORM, HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL SPENDING PRACTICES, EFFICIENCY, AND OPEN GOVERNMENT OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE NINETY-FOURTH CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION, JUNE 10, 20; JULY 8, 22, 23, 24, 1975
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