There are a significant number of areas where the Department of Defense is no longer technologically ahead. The most obvious fix for this is not necessarily changing the rules, but looking at where the budget’s going.
has competition at least in all critical areas or next-generation critical areas? Tat’s the kind of thing that we try to research in our research center here [at the University of Maryland]. So the sec- ond question, who do you buy it from, is [related to], “What do you want for your industrial base?”
And then the third question is, really, “Who does the buying?” And there’s one of
the biggest problems we have right
now—the experience of the acquisition workforce. You really want your senior people, experienced people, knowledge- able people to be making those decisions. But unfortunately, we have had an aging workforce, and they were replaced by “interns.” In fact, today 55 percent of the DOD’s acquisition workforce have less than five years of experience, with few mentors remaining to help them.
Army AL&T: Do you think that the Better Buying Power (BBP) initiative of building the professionalism of the work- force is really making a difference, or is it too early to tell?
Gansler: Well, it’s an important initia- tive—let’s start it that way.
In order to try to address this need, here in my research center, we’re running a program on acquisition specialization for graduate students—case studies and things like that, which we’re teaching and
getting certified. But even the Defense Acquisition University is somewhat resis- tant to the needed change in the sense that they don’t teach the best practices of the commercial world, and there are many areas where commercial best practices truly are the best. Tey teach, “Here’s how we do it,” the 186,000 pages of the Code of Federal Regulations. And they teach buying goods and not buying services.
Te BBP professionalism initiative is something we should be doing, because there aren’t mentors out there nowadays. One thing we might want to think about is creating an organization that has some experienced people who can help as coun- selors or mentors for the contracting and acquisition practices. I think that’s a step we need to take. Te world changes. Why are we teaching the way we used to do it, instead of recognizing that technology’s changed, the scenarios have changed, the threat has changed?
We didn’t have to worry about cybersecu- rity 15 years ago. And the sort of things that you could have—automation and other
techniques, robotics, things like
that—we want to make sure we’re taking full advantage of from the commercial world or even the global world, and not just constraining ourselves to the way we used to do it.
Army AL&T: Who would be the best entity to take up that responsibility for
providing experienced counsel, then? Would it be academia?
Gansler: Well, that would be in the right direction. And you also need to make sure you’ve got some of the creative and senior experienced government and industry people doing it, because the old way isn’t giving much authority to the program manager. Te contracting people now tell them what to do, and you’d like to have the program manager experienced as well as the contracting people. You’d like to have the program manager be able to have some flexibility to make some choices instead of having the old laws and rules dictate the way we do it.
Army AL&T: You’ve said, to quote the Gansler Commission report, that contracting people are “understaffed, overworked, undertrained, under- supported and, I would argue, most importantly, undervalued.” Given all that government civilian employees have been through over the last year with furloughs and sequestration, why would someone want a government job?
Gansler: Especially with what it pays, you mean, besides that.
Army AL&T: Besides that.
Gansler: My son [Douglas F. Gansler] was attorney general of Maryland [from 2006 to 2014], and he’s just gone to work for a law firm and his salary has skyrock- eted. I was impressed with that. It makes the point you’re making. I think what you need now is for [Secretary of Defense Dr.] Ash Carter to sort of take the lead in emphasizing the importance of an acqui- sition workforce career path, and they will be listened to.
Army AL&T: It seems as though govern- ment employees are often maligned as
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