Nicholas Chaillan has a fascinating LinkedIn post announcing his exit as DoD’s Chief Software Officer. He trumpeted a number of important accomplishments before commenting on what went wrong. Two things that jumped out to me were issues related to: (1) personnel; and (2) funding. We’ll start with personnel:
Please stop putting a Major or Lt Col. (despite their devotion, exceptional attitude, and culture) in charge of ICAM, Zero Trust or Cloud for 1 to 4 million users when they have no previous experience in that field – we are setting up critical infrastructure to fail. We would not put a pilot in the cockpit without extensive flight training; why would we expect someone with no IT experience to be close to successful? They do not know what to execute on or what to prioritize which leads to endless risk reduction efforts and diluted focus.
Indeed, this basic complaint puts all rapid acquisition and delegation of authority at risk. Currently, the 50-or-so offices that review major program decisions are there so that program officials can remain transient or even inexpert. This is not a new problem, but in fact has been one of the major complaints made by folks like DepSecDef David Packard and Adm. Hyman Rickover since the 1970s if not before.
And here on funding:
There have been continuous and exhausting fights to chase after funding “out-of-hide,” because we are not enabled to fix enterprise IT teams within Program Offices.
… But one of the main reasons for my decision was the failure of OSD and the Joint Staff to deliver on their own alleged top “priority”, JADC2 – they couldn’t “walk the walk.” I put my reputation on the line when I shared that I was asked by the Joint Staff to join the JADC2 team as their CSO. They wanted me to help deliver a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) within 4 months so that we would finally have a tangible deliverable to show for JADC2, not just redundant and siloed work performed by each of the DoD services or vaporware/stale documents.
After a massive undertaking and development of a scope of work, based on demands from our warfighters and COCOMs, I had just started the work and built-up excitement with teams and our mission partners, when I was told by the Joint Staff that there was no FY22 funding to support the MVP after all. After all the talk and continued assertions that this was critical work, DOD could not even find $20M to build tremendously beneficial warfighter capabilities. A rounding error for the Department. Never has my “walk the walk” remark felt more relevant. We had to wait for FY23 funding…
There were more complaints about CloudOne, PlatformOne, and Zero Trust not receiving direct funding. And this quote says it all: “At this point, I am just tired of continuously chasing support and money to do my job. My office still has no billet and no funding, this year and the next.” Chaillan got underway at the Pentagon in August 2018. I suppose FY 2024 would be the first time the CSO could get billets or funding if he got the support. Not surprisingly, that’s 5 years out from his start, the length of the Future Years’ Defense Program.
You can put me, as a non-expert, in the group who does not think there’s a single enterprise architecture for DoD. Kubernetes, for example, may not be the best solution for all cases. But these enterprise or enabling tools need to be funded as enduring capabilities. And someone with plenty of technical expertise should be put in charge to integrate requirements, budgeting, and acquisition, as well as delivery of those tools to weapon systems.
There is a chicken-or-the-egg problem with the problems of personnel and budgeting. Without excellent personnel, you cannot reform the PPBE process and empower them to make program decisions. Without reforming PPBE, you have no opportunities for building excellent personnel because they are put into a fishbowl of externally handed mandates.
My view is to take an agile approach. Find pockets of DoD where there is talent, empower them with portfolio budgeting authorities, and slowly expanding. Indeed, DoD can find talented people like Chaillan — already market tested in the commercial sector — willing to come to defense and take on hefty responsibilities for our national security… but only if they are empowered.
Chaillan was protected by Will Roper for a time, but even then he had to survive by scrounging for reprogrammed dollars. Then, the tides changed and his top cover left. Chaillan’s experience and that of others are a warning to outside talent: stay away. The imperative for PPBE reform has never been greater, because it is PPBE that takes decisions away from people and puts it into the hands of non-experts that are not responsible for doing the work.
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