“I had a boss one time who said the processes and systems we have [in PPBE] are such that it takes exceptional people to do average work,” said George Kovatch, another task force member who served as deputy DoD comptroller from 2019 to 2021.
That was from a Federal News Network article: Fixing DoD’s broken budgeting system a big reform topic for 2023. Be sure to listen to the whole podcast session from On DoD with Jared Serbu.
The task force mentioned there is not the congressional Commission on PPBE Reform, but instead a task force created by the American Society of Military Comptrollers (ASMC). I’ve got to admit, after listening to the podcast episode I’ve grown bullish on the ASMC task force for helping move the conversation forward. Here’s an excerpt from task force chairman Michael Conlin:
Let’s use a specific example: the F-35. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware. But it’s also a beautiful piece of software, with 25 million lines of code just to fly the plane. That’s not targeting, that’s not weapons, it’s just flying the plane. In a modern world, I can push new code into production in an hour or less. But when I need to get approval to develop that code two years in advance, I now cannot change the performance parameters of the most exquisite jet fighter on the planet in less than two and a half or three years.
The article misses a lot of good parts from the podcast, so I’ll excerpt just one slice below. Here is task force member Cameron Holt:
A lot of people don’t know how much Congress micromanages it. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. Over time, there’s been more and more controls placed on the budget to the point where the name of the program and the phase of each program is on the statute when it comes out.
From Congress on down, that creates enormous perverse incentives. The oversight of Congress has not been modernized over time. The incentive winds up being, spend all the money, as fast as you can within those narrowly defined phases and name of that program. It leaves us a situation where a PEO cannot legally optimize the spend in their portfolio… without the notification and prior permission of Congress.
We’ve come to the place where the way the United States resources national security is actually more centrally planned and overseen than it is in the Chinese Communist Party — which is ironic and a little alarming to say it that way, but it’s the truth… China can take advantage of [commercial technology] because they don’t micromanage the funds nearly as much. They can move money in our own markets within 20 minutes, whereas we would have to know two years in advance what technologies we want to fund, and explain that to Congress.
Holt says that Congress is actually moving in the opposite direction, trying to increase control over line items rather than delegating some flexibility. As Rich Brady, CEO of ASMC, stated: “The real fundamental tension here is one of control.” He argued that the real work is how to find the right balance between Congressional oversight/control and DoD flexibility.
All the talk of cool emerging technologies and the future of warfare will not have an impact on the decisive 2020s unless this tension between the oversight complex and line managers is resolved. My biggest worry is that 80% of the program offices wouldn’t want execution flexibility to move faster because that means taking responsibility. It’s easier to guide the train down the railroad tracks than it is the blaze a new trail.
Anyway, I was nodding my head during the entire episode, so give it a listen! Here are the guests Jared Serbu had on:
- Michael Conlin, former DoD chief data officer and chairman of the ASMC PPBE Reform Task Force
- George Kovatch, former DoD deputy comptroller and ASMC task force member
- Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt (ret.), former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for contracting, and member of the ASMC task force
- Rich Brady, a retired Marine Corps colonel and the CEO of ASMC
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