I was playing around on Google NGram to see the relative importance of acquisition reform efforts over time. Interestingly enough, the term “Acquisition Reform” doesn’t really appear until the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act and similar reforms associated with New Public Management. Certainly the term “defense acquisition” and the “weapons acquisition process” were already common in DoD by the 1970s, they just didn’t register on Google NGram, which indexes all the books scanned by Google over time. The “Acquisition Reform” term did not even tick up during the 2009 Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act (WSARA) or whatever has been happening since 2016 or so.
One thing you’ll notice is how prominent PPBS was during the 1960s and 1970s. It really was a phenomenon, and because President Johnson expanded the PPBS budgeting and analysis process to most federal agencies in 1965, it got much greater attention than in defense circles alone. The impact of PPBS on education at all levels was particularly prominent. Of course, almost every federal agency abandoned PPBS by the mid-1970s, as did foreign nations, industry, and local governments. #PPBE reform
I was a bit surprised how few the mentions of Goldwater-Nichols were, and how big the Grace Commission was for a short time. Many remember the Grace Commission for the $400 hammer and $600 toilet seat. More recent defense acquisition terms like “WSARA” and “Better Buying Power” wouldn’t even register on the above chart. But there are mentions, so let’s zoom in a little.
In the above chart, I’m a little surprised at how few mentions of Other Transactions Authority there are. Even though there was some big legislation in 2016 that led to a rapid increase in OT obligations, the mentions of OTAs continued falling 2016-2019. Maybe there’s a lag and that will bump up when the data are in.
The 2009 Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act has almost completely been forgotten, as has the term “fly before you buy” which was more popular in the 1990s. If you plotted “Urgent Operational Needs,” it would be a bell curve peaking at the top of this chart around 2010.
I still am not sure what terms define the 2016-2021 acquisition reform era, but things like OTA, Middle Tier, rapid acquisition, software pathway, JADC2, and devsecops come to mind. Are almost unmentioned in Google NGram, as they are in Google Search Trends.
Your Defense Acquisition Reform graphic should have included the Packard Commission — which recommended fundamental acquisition reform (overall recommending the DoD seek to follow suitable commercial practices) as well as reorganization of the military command structure (Goldwater Nichols)
I gave Packard Commission a try on NGram and it wasn’t even visible on the chart so I left it off. I was actually surprised at that, but maybe because I didn’t search it by its official Blue Ribbon panel name or something. I was also surprised the Grace Commission got so many more hits than Goldwater Nichols.