The reality of the last 20 years where the Department has tried to have an independent third-silo be that Chief Management Officer and whatever it was called in the recent incarnations, and it just doesn’t work in the Pentagon. In my experience as an official in the Pentagon and as a contractor supporting the organization, it [the CMO] just doesn’t have the throw-weight that the military departments or organizations such as CAPE or the Undersecretary for Policy do. But having that individual reporting directly to the Deputy Secretary makes sense rather than having it as its own organization.
… let’s empower it in the right way by using the Deputy Secretary’s authorities and scoping down the CMO. Secretary Esper has really come down this road by bringing in the Night Court approach from the Army to the Department. He has empowered the military departments to give them bogies on defense reform: I want you to reach this number, and then hold them accountable. At the same time he put Ms. Herschman directly on the 4th estate, and she created a unified POM for the first time, and that’s where she found $11 billion in savings.
There’s no Chief Management Officer at Xerox or Lockheed Martin. They empower the profit/loss leaders and hold them accountable. I think the Secretary is taking a similar approach.
That was Jerry McGinn, executive director at Mason GovCon, speaking on Government Matters. The proposed FY21 NDAA would make the CMO the principle improvement officer reporting directly to the Deputy Secretary rather than an independent organization which is nominally the 3rd most powerful individual in the Pentagon. Besides business systems and a couple other areas, the current CMO is basically irrelevant when it comes to deciding military programs. Formerly the Deputy Secretary of Defense simultaneously served the CMO role.
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