Are we at a crisis point in acquisition reform?

Francis Rose: Every uniformed official that I ever hear anything from talks about speed… When there’s legislative language that proposes exactly the opposite, is working around it a potential solution?

 

Bill Greenwalt: Not anymore if they throw more process, more testing, and more compliance on these programs that are designed to go fast. Once you do that, there are no more workarounds. What the appropriators are going after are the workarounds put in place so that the Department could go fast. Instead, they are essentially sabotaging that language in such a way that it’s just going to stretch out. In the meantime, the Chinese, Russians, and our other adversaries are going faster. That’s just the situation that the Biden administration is going to have to address, and work with the appropriators to let them know that isn’t the proper way to go.

 

Francis: … Who does this benefit? If it slows the Department down, and cuts innovation potentially, why is this even here?

 

Bill: The benefit is still in the minds of those who believe that a 15 to 20 year process of developing systems is the right way to go. A little more cynically, whoever actually has current projects coming off the production line will benefit as well. If you slow what is coming up to replace, then you have to continue with what you have.

That was the excellent Bill Greenwalt on Government Matters, The Future of Defense Appropriations. Here’s a related LinkedIn post from a concerned Pete Modigliani.

Appropriators Have a Veto

For a little more context, the Senate Appropriations Committee asked for more controls on Middle-Tier of Acquisition programs in the FY2021 report, as I discussed here. Basically, the DoD can go as fast as it wants on requirements and acquisition, with new policies approved by the Authorizers through an NDAA, but none of it matters unless the Appropriators allow it because ultimately programs can’t proceed without funding.

It has taken nearly 5 years for acquisition reform to start bubbling up into new programs and a new workforce mindset. Now that the system is on the cusp, the Appropriators are holding funding ransom until the old processes are reinstituted in practice, if not by name. They are the final veto on the acquisition reform agenda, and it looks like the Appropriators will use it.

I think a lot of this reality that gets played out on the Hill is relayed to working-level officials through OMB and Comptroller, so they take the heat of being backwards when in fact they are realists.

Pendulum of Reform

Again, I think that the pendulum of acquisition reform has already started to swing back towards central control even though it might not seem that way.

There’s a number of factors presently obscuring this view: (1) media relations of accelerators like AFWERX and DIU; (2) acquisition executives like Roper and Geurts continuing to push forward; (3) the rapid increase of Other Transactions; (4) the release of the Adaptive Acquisition Framework.

With each of those items, there is cause for concern: (1) AFWERX, DIU, and other accelerators have done amazing opening up the funnel, but transitioning programs at scale is still a challenge (cough, budget reform needed!); (2) Geurts, Roper, and other acquisition executives may be on the way out soon; (3) Other Transactions got a huge boost — over $9 billion by the end of September for COVID-19 alone — but there is gripes about a lack of transparency and a potential audit reckoning after the crisis; and (4) the AAF also has 13 functional DoD Instructions, service specific policies, and 10 acquisition guides which bring a lot of the same process down onto novel pathways.