Has Congress descended from oversight to micromanagement?

Here’s a slice from a conversation between Peter Levine, Bob Work, and Susanna Blume on Peter’s recent book: Defense Management Reform.

Bob Work: I do believe that over the last 10 years, Congress has moved beyond measured oversight and into micromanagement, as indicated by the length of the NDAA and the amount of — we want you to split AT&L, we want you to stand up a CMO… Oops we fooled you, we don’t really want you to stand up a CMO. I believe right now we’re a little out of whack. Congress became too — I’d be interested in Peter’s view on this — it became too interested in management rather than oversight.

 

Peter Levine: I think that’s probably true. In the book I talk about the acquisition system and how some of the problems we’ve had with acquisition are not due to bad people but to a built-in set of incentives where the incentive to keep a program going is so important to the people who are closest to it that it is only natural that you get optimistic assessments and unrealistic projections of how well the program’s going.

 

… If you look at Congress and legislation, there’s a set of structural incentives. The way that you show that you’re an effective member of Congress or an effective staffer is you draft legislation. So you identify a problem and you draft legislation. It would be nice if Congress would go back to some of the feeling they had 30 years ago — that you could be effective by holding a hearing. But I think that right now the idea of hearings is sort of downgraded and they’re viewed as not being terribly effective. Nobody’s paying any attention. Puts much more weight on the legislation. The fact that the NDAA is one of the few pieces of legislation that’s still passed puts much more weight on the NDAA. Everybody wants to get a provision in it, and if everybody has to have a provision in it with 535 members of Congress, that’s a lot of provisions.

Peter’s point on oversight through hearings rather than legislation I think is an important one. Hearings are more about keeping apprised of strategic plans and program executions, with selective pressure being brought to bear where necessary. Legislation will direct DoD to do something, or often prevent DoD from doing certain things.

It isn’t just that Congress is legislating more provisions. More and more, Congress is directing DoD through extra-legislative measures. Direction provided in conference reports or explanatory statements, for example, are treated as though they were legislation. They are not.

Similarly, program elements provided in the budget justification documents are not written into appropriations (except shipbuilding). Rules around getting congressional approval for moving of money between programs is simply a custom. It is a tool of congressional micromanagement that didn’t exist in the 1950s and before, and has grown more strict over time.

Congress must figure out how to conduct oversight without tying the hands of DoD. Rather than relying on legislation and process, oversight should develop people and organizations, and hold them individually accountable through insight and investigation. Along that line of thinking, people over process, here’s a good quote attributed to Steve Jobs, found in General Zinni’s recent article:

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them. It’s not the tools that you have faith in—tools are just tools