Dan Patt: Yeah. Speaking of a fresh look, we found it fascinating that in your report, you recommend changes to the budget and appropriations process to enable more flexibility and responsiveness and resource allocation. What might that look like in practice?
Rep. Jim Himes: Well, the structural problem is probably easier to solve and there are mechanisms that do that. There are mechanisms that set up long tailed projects with an R and D phase, a proving phase, and then an acquisition phase. They’re always at risk, but there are structural mechanisms that I think you can do. And look, I’m a member of Congress and I take seriously that we have absolute control of the purse strings.
But we ought to think back to Xerox PARC. And the example I just gave there is virtue in taking a group of really smart people and maybe dialing back the oversight a little bit, not a lot, because we’re dealing with taxpayer money, but dialing back the oversight a little bit. So we can say, “Hey, you thought this was only going to take a year. It sounds like it’s going to take three years. That’s okay. Go for it.” That’s a profoundly unnatural thing for the Congress of the United States to do.
That was from a nice Hudson Institute interview with Rep. Jim Hines, “Winning the Innovation Race in the Intelligence Community.” You can watch the video here.
I have a slightly different view. I wouldn’t advocate dialing oversight back. I’d recommend reorienting oversight.
It seems Rep. Hines’ mindset is still in the realm of predict-and-control. For example, he uses an example that a program was estimated to take a year but will actually take three. “That’s okay. Go for it.” That’s pretty consistent with dialing back the current style of oversight.
By contrast, reorienting oversight would never have resulted in that question, which is really an industrial era question: “Did you execute to a fixed specification within the planned cost and time?” The question should have been, “What can you show for the spending — what was learned — and can you argue that proceeding is worth the added investment relative to alternative priorities?”
The whole fixation of control should move from planning-based to evidence-based. DoD shouldn’t require permission to innovate. Those closer to the work should have increased discretion over starting, pivoting, or cancelling projects — especially in the early stages. Congress should be constantly evaluating the results of those decisions, and holding individuals accountable for their actions.
Execution to a plan says nothing about whether the plan was desirable or not. Investigations of weapons tests, of contract arrangements, of workforce conduct — this provides something tangible to give judgment about. The goal shouldn’t be to stop errors before they happen, but to recognize they will happen and have a process for discovering and rectifying the errors as fast as possible.
Leave a Reply