On the design of government reporting requirements

One has to be very careful in the way this is put. I do not favor standardized forms in the sense that the Government literally prepares forms and has the contractor fill them out. Rather, I favor standards in the sense of general principles and definitions to which contractors are expected to adhere. The defense community is quite properly upset when one talks about standard forms, because each contractor is different, and at that level of detail it would be very bad to try to fit the details to any kind of standard pattern. But there is no reason why they should not all go by standard principles.

That was the wise — and former ASD Comptroller — Robert Anthony in May 1970. I think the statement would not shock anyone today. It is part of good reporting regulations. But when Anthony became Comptroller in 1965, things were a bit different.

For example, PERT COST had contractors set up their management systems to the work packages defined by the government that aggregated through a Work Breakdown Structure. Anthony initiated the review of existing government reporting, and simplified or eliminated many of them.

With PERT COST, Anthony had it reformed. No longer would detailed formats and controls. Rather, a contractor’s system had to simply meet certain criteria. The new system, eventually installed in 1967 after a test phase in the Air Force, became called the Cost Schedule Control System Criteria (CSCS/C). Most of the same guidelines created in 1967 still exist today in the ANSI-EIA 748 standards for Earned Value Management System.

It turns out that EVMS is not flexible enough to the requirements of today’s business practices. Even the “good” government reporting regulation described by Anthony no longer works. I think that the necessary irregularity of innovation means an irregularity of planning, control, and evaluation is required. Accountability must be achieved not by filling out reports, or even by adhering to standards, but by partitioning tasks into smaller parts and measuring outcomes versus real alternatives available — filter out the bad and encourage the good.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT N. ANTHONY, ROSS GRAHAM WALKER PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT CONTROL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AND FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, COMPTROLLER

THE ACQUISITION OF WEAPONS SYSTEMS. HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMY IN GOVERNMENT OF THE JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES NINETY-FIRST CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION, PART 1.