Policy is not made once and for all; it is made and re-made endlessly. Policy-making is a process of successive approximation to some desired objectives in which what is de-sired itself continues to change under reconsideration. Making policy is at best a very rough process. Neither social scientists, nor politicians, nor public administrators yet know enough about the social world to avoid repeated error in predicting the consequences of policy moves. A wise policy-maker consequently expects that his policies will achieve only part of what he hopes and at the same time will produce unanticipated consequences he would have preferred to avoid. If he proceeds through a succession of incremental changes, he avoids serious lasting mistakes in several ways.
In the first place, past sequences of policy steps have given him knowledge about the probable consequences of further similar steps. Second, he need not attempt big jumps toward his goals that would require predictions beyond his or anyone else’s knowledge, because he never expects his policy to be a final resolution of a problem. His decision is only one step, one that if successful can quickly be followed by another. Third, he is in effect able to test his previous predictions as he moves on to each further step. Lastly, he often can remedy a past error fairly quickly-more quickly than if policy proceeded through more distinct steps widely spaced in time. Compare this comparative analysis of incremental changes with the aspiration to employ theory in the root method.
That was Charles Lindblom, “The Science of ‘Muddling Through'”. Public Administration Review, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring, 1959), pp. 79-88.
This is 1950s speak for the religion that has become agile methodology. Unfortunately, the institutional structures throughout the government, and particularly the DoD, completely rejected this incremental approach. Policy in the DoD is made once and for all. Once Milestone B is passed, all uncertainties are expected to be zero. Fixed requirements, life-cycle cost estimate, technical feasibility, detailed sustainment plan, IP plan, pricing, etc. All those ask questions about the defined end state of the program, not a process by which the best overall end state is arrived at.
Reopening issues after initiation into full scale development makes DoD leaders look like a oaf, unable to execute to what they said they could do. But of course, DoD leaders couldn’t embark on a program unless they made it appear like they knew exactly what would happen — which doesn’t even hold for simple construction projects which often have unknown problems with foundations or otherwise.
So DoD is caught in a conundrum. They cannot enter the learning process Lindblom articulates except surreptitiously, because all required analyses pretend that future decades are knowable.
The funny thing is, once a program is approved and budgets are lined up for the entire life cycle, then almost any change is acceptable so long as it looks like “technical” or “cost” challenges to executing the plan. If the F-35’s current state was known in 2001, would they still have gone for it? Probably not. But that doesn’t matter, the program survives any challenge.
The lesson from 2000s acquisition cost growth was, for policy makers, that MORE planning and up-front controls will avoid that issue. That was the lesson from the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009. Since 2015, it seems a more incremental approach has taken hold, but it’s not clear at all the the Adaptive Acquisition Framework and other efforts will succeed in casting out the oversight complex’s adherence to prediction and control.
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