When a program manager in the Pentagon is getting threat briefs, they’re your best friend before the program starts. They want to hear all about this stuff because they’re trying to formulate it. But once they’re actually executing that project, then you’re their enemy in a certain sense. I’m speaking somewhat characteristically, somewhat cartoony.
When you’re presenting data that says, that module you’re just about ready to finish is not going to work against any of the threats we’re aware of — then basically you’re telling them they are not going to meet their deadlines, they are not going to hit their target milestones, they will be delayed and over budget and they will not be perceived as awesome and they’re not going to get that promotion that they wanted.
So you become unfortunately adversarial in those situations. Good program managers do the right thing. Sometimes people really want that career advancement.
That was Dewey Murdick, director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, on the China Talk podcast. I think this anecdote is characteristic of what we should expect from the “program of record” concept. There is a static cost-effectiveness analysis at the front end, and for the sake of rationality, it must incorporate the full cost of the system lifecycle, through disposal. All that’s left is to execute what is already given in the reams of documentation. Changes to that reality are viewed as errors rather than correcting the errors that will always exist in such premature documentation.
The fact that an irrelevant system may be deployed is of less concern to the system of incentives created by the process of programming than the fact is was on-cost and on-schedule.
You’d think it shocking that a senior military leader would not be interested in how new threats impact the critical piece of technology he or she is responsible for delivering to the field. But the experience of a threat analyst is also reflected in the entrepreneur, who is trying to offer new or different ways of achieving the objective. “Thanks for your interest in national security, I’m not funded for it.”
If DoD is going to compete with an innovating enemy, its system of incentives should be aligned with response to change. It should optimize on outcomes that are a function of both the measurable and the intangible, a reflection of judgment and domain expertise. This is why DoD needs #PPBEreform.
Leave a Reply