Did neoliberal economics destroy government’s ability to execute programs? Not so fast…
You can either look at this as deterministic history that, once upon a time there were really smart people in government who knew how to […]
Month: April 2021
Should government be more mission-driven?
Only when it’s too late, only when we have a pandemic of the scale we have now, do we realize, uh oh, we have to […]
The investment thesis behind Anduril
Here’s Katherine Boyle from General Catalyst talking on the Venture Stories podcast about her rationale being funding Anduril in the early days: Anduril’s a company […]
Acquisition headlines (4/4 – 4/10/2021)
Defense Business Brief: Defense giants gird for tax battle; $715B skinny budget; Mixed readiness picture; and more… (Defense One) “Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes issued […]
Two views of defense budget reform
The combination of congressional limitations and DOD inflexibility undermine any effort to transfer funds rapidly, from a hi-tech program that appears to be going nowhere […]
Will technology bring a return of the citizen-soldier?
I think it’s time to drastically reduce the active military, and turn to a citizen soldier society. That doesn’t mean we don’t need things like […]
Government in-house talent and the Bell Report of 1962
[Budget Director David Bell’s] report of April 1962 recommended continuing a heavy reliance on private contractors. The government, however, needed enough in-house competence so that […]
Army-Air Force spat over long range fires exposes policy failures
The U.S. Air Force general in charge of managing the service’s bomber inventory slammed the Army’s new plan to base long-range missiles in the Pacific, calling […]
Podcast: PPBE Reform Panel 2 — From Ideas to Implementation
In this second discussion on the future of the Planning-Programming-Budgeting-Execution (PPBE) process, Center for Government Contracting executive director Jerry McGinn hosts a distinguished panel including: […]
Podcast: PPBE Reform Panel 1 — Key Recommendations
For the first time in more than 50 years, a serious discussion is emerging on the foundations of defense budgeting and oversight. The “valley of […]
Acquisition headlines (3/28 – 4/3/2021)
Brown tapped for Pentagon acquisition chief. (Inside Defense) “President Biden intends to nominate Michael Brown, the director of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, to be […]
George Mason University study on digital acquisition
How can DOD and commercial companies work together in the most efficient way possible? Discovering the answer is the yearlong quest of a study launched […]
A proposal for accelerating investment in dual-use tough tech
We propose the establishment of a new program in which the government directly teams with the venture capital (VC) community at the earliest stages of […]
The folly of neglecting resilience for the sake of efficiency
Resilience is something that may be very hard to see, unless you exceed its limits, overwhelm and damage the balancing loops, and the system structure […]