Mac Thornberry backs NSCAI recommendations on budget reform

Mac Thornberry is on point in his article, How Congress must reform its budget process to compete against China in AI:

The Biden administration’s 2022 budget proposal includes a record $112 billion for defense research and development. The increase is appropriate, but more money alone will not keep us competitive with China and other adversaries. Today’s rapid innovation and technological change renders our industrial age approach to funding obsolete. Along with spending more in crucial areas, we need significant reform in how those funds are allocated and spent.

 

… First, the Commission recommends that Congress establish a dedicated AI fund as a near-term solution to bridge the “valley of death.”… Second, the Commission recommends a pilot program to test a portfolio management approach for requirements and budgeting to overcome the lack of flexibility in DOD’s program-centric budget process… Third, the Commission recommends establishing a single appropriation for the life cycle costs of software and digital technologies, building on an existing initiative known as the Budget Activity 8 pilot… Finally, the Commission recommends a pilot program to explore mission-focused budgeting.

These four areas don’t sound so difficult, but they get to the core of management ideology. As noted in the article Why Agile Fails:

Budgeting is built on two fundamental assumptions: The future is predictable and, that people can’t be trusted. It doesn’t get more un-agile.

 

… Agile methodologies, on the other hand, were born out of the fact that the whole “estimating and planning” thing apparently didn’t work out quite well frequently – and instead, people wanted to be able to quickly react to change.

I believe that Goldwater-Nichols would pale in comparison to the challenges faced by budget reform. After all, Goldwater-Nichols largely affected the interest of military officers rather than political or industrial interests. Politicians like the fact that the budget is programmed. All those estimates of the future, and controls against moving funds to new priorities, allows policymakers to know which districts (and contractors) the funds are likely to benefit. HASC Chair Adam Smith recently mentioned the issue: