PROGRESS REPORT
unit cost baseline]?”—and those sorts of things, which are about the bureaucracy and its functioning. Tey’re not about, “Did we meet our timelines for certain things?” Tey’re not so much about what we’re actually doing and whether it’s a smart thing to do or not.
When I look at a program, what I first want to see is, what am I building and what are the risks associated with build- ing that? And then, what are we doing to mitigate those risks, and how are we structuring the acquisition to incentivize industry to do the best possible job? How are we structuring the source selection so that we get the best possible solution for the money? Tose are things that are
substantive and matter. But often those are the things that people are not focused on. Tey’re more concerned about whether all the bureaucratic I’s have been dotted and T’s have been crossed.
Army AL&T: Shifting to the global envi- ronment, we now seem to be in a more or less continuous war footing, given the contingencies that arise with nonstate actors in opposition to a variety of states. What effect do you think this is having on the structure and practice of DOD acquisition?
Kendall: We’ve done a lot to meet the needs of operational
commanders as they’re engaged in operations. We’ve
established a group called the War- fighter Senior Integration Group that originated under Dr. [Ashton B.] Carter when he was in this position and that I chair now.
It meets monthly; it is
actually meeting every two weeks now because we have separate meetings on Afghanistan and the Iraq-Syria situa- tion. And that group brings together all of the DOD stakeholders in the services to essentially address the needs of the combatant commanders, the operational commanders in theater.
And the idea—and I think we’ve been pretty good at this—is to cut through the red tape, to get rid of all the bureau- cratic barriers, the authority barriers, the money barriers, the contracting barriers that get in the way of giving operational commanders what they need as quickly as possible. And I think we’ve had a lot of success with that. Tere is a group in my office called the Joint Rapid Acquisi- tion Cell that is coordinating all of this. I think we’ve come a long way, and I don’t want to see that lost.
SETTING A HIGH BAR
Jeanette Rhodes of the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) Engineering and Analysis Directorate receives a Spotlight Award from Kendall on June 6, 2014, at the agency’s Fort Lee, VA, headquarters. During his visit to DCMA, Kendall presented a number of Spotlight Awards to recognize the recipients’ BBP efforts. The awards represent a concerted effort by the USD(AT&L) to recognize noteworthy contributions and exceptional performance by individuals and teams across the full spectrum of defense acquisition activities, thus projecting a high standard for good performance. (Photo by Misha King, DCMA)
When Dr. Carter was here as the deputy [secretary of defense, from 2011 to 2013] and even when he was in my position [from 2009 to 2011], he felt very strongly about that, and so I know we’re in sync on this, and Deputy Secretary [Robert O.] Work is also. Te department needs to have the ability to respond quickly when operational commanders need that. And it was something that did not exist in the early days of our campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve built the capability to do that, and we need to keep it.
Tis is a separate track, if you will, from the normal acquisition track, which is, you know, a little bit more risk-averse, but also involves large sums of money and programs that take years to do under
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Army AL&T Magazine April–June 2015
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