The correct way to respond to a low-trust environment is not to double down on proceduralism, but to commit yourself to the “it does exactly what it says on the tin” principle and implement policies that have the following characteristics:
- It’s easy for everyone, whether they agree with you or disagree with you, to understand what it is you say you are doing.
- It’s easy for everyone to see whether or not you are, in fact, doing what you said you would do.
- It’s easy for you and your team to meet the goal of doing the thing that you said you would do.
That was from Matthew Yglesias, Making policy for a low-trust world. (HT: Chris.) He uses the example of using an age-based rule for distributing the Covid vaccine rather than the complicated rules currently in place. A lot more at the link.
The way defense acquisition is run resembles a low trust environment. Indeed, the House Appropriations Committee specifically outlined a lack a trust as a key impediment to increasing flexibility in resource allocation. The overflow of statute and internal regulations at all levels reflects that lack of trust. The DoD has doubled-down on proceduralism, even in its new acquisition pathways. The lack of trust also manifests at the contract level.
Despite it all, there seems to be little clarity on actual performance. This stems from the fixation on the total system lifecycle of once-in-a-generation platforms. The time lag from plans to feedback is too long to assign responsibility for outcomes. So many new technologies are demanded that it is difficult to understand causality in the system and make reasoned tradeoffs.
As Oliver Williamson described in 1968, the DoD should partition contract (and program) tasks across time and component in order to lower discretion and increase transparency. Rather than complicated justifications resulting in the demand for over-promising outcomes, a better way forward is provide simple statements of objectives and constrain the cost and time.
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