How DoD policy-making became over-simplified
So the program budget may become, not an information system, but an approved five-year plan that serves as an instrument of control. This arrangement can […]
Search Results for program budget
It’s not just my imagination — why funding is so important to tech progress
Here’s my last excerpt — I promise — from Jason Crawford’s excellent interview on the Venture Stories podcast, “Progress Studies in 2020.” Jason: I want […]
Gov’t funding is short-term, project-based, risk-averse, and prone to groupthink
One hypothesis I’d like to investigate is that we’ve gotten a little too centralized and monolithic in our funding. That is something to address. The […]
How McNamara’s top-down structure was flipped, but equally insidious forces prevailed
Taking the place of the Draft Presidential Memorandum was a new document called the Program Objective Memorandum (POM), through which the services could outline their […]
Here’s a better way for the Space Force to be financially agile
When Roper was in charge of the Strategic Capabilities Office he had the ability to move money between programs in a way that allowed him […]
Is the time right for the Pentagon to lean in on Blockchain?
… the Advancing Blockchain Act directs the Federal Trade Commission and the Commerce Secretary to collaboratively investigate the decentralized, distributed ledger technology over the next two […]
How much oomph is left in rapid acquisition reform?
We’ve seen this pendulum swing drastically over the last few decades. In the middle of the 20th Century we saw thousands of companies iteratively delivering […]
Defense is too big, complex, dispersed to be managed from a single point
It has been suggested in some quarters that I am unwilling to decentralize decision-making authority. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I strongly believe […]
PPBE Reform
The programming aspect of the budget process is the single most important problem of acquisition reform. Funds are locked into finely detailed programs devised 2 […]
General Hyten gives a metric for measuring acquisition success
There’s actually a pretty easy metric if you want to evaluate whether you’ve been successful for not. All you have to do is go out […]
Acquisition headlines
BAE Systems rallies after snapping up U.S. defense companies. “… it announced it was buying Collins Aerospace’s military global positioning system business for $1.925 billion […]
The most important unresolved aspect of acquisition reform
New guidance for middle tier acquisitions at the Department of Defense looks to clarify the authorities that procurement professionals can use. However, experts like Eric […]
EVMS is not well suited to an Agile environment
Problem: DoD established use of EVM as a requirement for periodically measuring linear programs with firm baselines established prior to starting development. EVM is not […]
How OSD, feeding on its growth, became a separate empire
I mention this point at the outset because, from shattered illusions that mere passage of a unification act would produce a military utopia, there has […]
William Roper is saying all the right things on defense innovation
What we really have to do in acquisition is shift the culture that is solely focused on the balance sheet — on cost — and […]