I was talking to someone the other day quite senior in the acquisition arm of a service who was basically saying look — my role in this is just to acquire systems. I acquire systems based on the requirements I’m given. I’m here to tell you the requirements I’ve been given make no sense, I’m not making the best use of the technologies at my disposal to go solve problems but I don’t have the mandate to rewrite my requirements. So I’ll keep buying the thing in line with the requirement I’m given — and hope that those with persuasion and other powers that be inside the bureaucracy can change the requirement.
These are the kinds of things I’m confident happen more than this one time I’m relating anecdotally. It gets again to that fractured nature of accountability. How can we close that down so we can disrupt ourselves rather than continue to do the things we’ve always done? How do we do it faster?
That was Chris Brose of the Wardroom podcast, The fractured nature of accountability. So much of the acquisition system is based on program planning and documentation that it’s easy to forget that accountability applies to individual people only — never organizations or programs. Congress cannot hold a program accountable. Here’s a bit more from Chris:
The thing that has become more and more clear to me is that the problem in government is the fractured nature of accountability… The people who write requirements are not the people who program and budget for it, they’re not the people who acquire it, and they’re not the end users of it. All of those are different groups. Each is responsible for each link in the chain and if one fails the whole thing breaks down.
… The only place accountability really resides is at way high levels, senior chiefs or secretaries — the people that don’t have the time, or the I would argue the granular information to make the right decisions in a timely manner. So what we get is a whole series of different things that have to happen, run by people in different organizations. Unless all those planets align, you don’t get to the outcome you need. There’s not singularity of accountability.
Eric, I quibble with you all the time but I could not agree more in this case. Lack of accountability is almost sufficient to explain, all by itself, the recurring issues with defense acquisition.
Thanks David, always love your quibbles because they force me to think harder! Wish more people would push back on me!
Curious what your take then is on the Army’s approach, using CFTs to consolidate technology, requirements, and acquisition into one organization. Authority for acquisition still runs through ASA(ALT), but the CFT director is accountable for the modernization efforts in their portfolio. This seems to me like an attempt to centralize accountability within the limits of law/statute.
I tend to think they’ve done alright helping link AFC and ASAALT efforts, I really liked what Ostrowski was trying to do — but some folks have complained to me that the CFTs have just created another stovepipe and layer of bureaucracy that is empire building. Acquisition folks particularly do not seem to like how AFC in general has taken over a lot of the RDT&E planning. But it’s hard for me to adjudicate because things seem to be moving pretty well for their 31+4 programs. Any insights/resources you can offer me?