OPERATION: PROCUREMENT REFORM
AN AGENT FOR CHANGE Established in late 2014 within the Administrative Office of
the President,
the National Procurement Authority is the agency charged with bringing about procurement reform for all 64 minis- tries and procurement entities Afghanistan. Te
agency’s goal
across is
to
foster institutional reform to provide bet- ter goods and services for Afghanistan through an effective, efficient and trans- parent procurement system.
Reforming or changing a dysfunc-
tional system is never easy, especially one viewed as having corrupt individu- als in senior
leadership positions. In
understanding Ghani’s vision for the Afghanistan procurement system and the role of the National Procurement Author- ity,
the Combined Security Transition
Command – Afghanistan (CSTC-A) established the Procurement Reform Branch in the Contracting Enabler Cell in September 2015 to train, advise and assist the authority on its efforts. One of the underlying challenges facing the National Procurement Authority is how to bring reform to a system fraught with corruption for decades, and still keep a functioning procurement system during a time of war.
In a perfect world, a radical approach might be best—just dissolve the current procurement system and start over— but that’s not realistic when Afghan soldiers and policemen are losing their lives every day to bring security to their homeland. Tey need a functioning pro- curement system to provide them with the goods and services necessary to con- tinue the fight.
Under the leadership of Dr. Beth Rairigh, deputy director of
the Con-
tracting Enabler Cell, the Procurement Reform Branch is tasked with helping the
16
SMALL TEAM, BIG IMPACT
U.S. and Afghan personnel make up the Procurement Reform Branch. From left in this photo, taken in March at Camp Resolute Support in Kabul: Christian Finley from the Defense Contract Man- agement Agency (DCMA) Boeing Huntington Beach, California; Ajmal Paiman; Dr. Beth Rairigh, DCMA Kelly Aircraft Integration and Maintenance Overhaul, San Antonio, Texas; Ahmad Fawad Azizi; and Chanet Stewart, DCMA Phoenix, Arizona. With the mission to help the National Procurement Authority develop a plan allowing for incremental reforms, the branch has impacts reaching beyond the Afghan national defense and security forces into every procurement entity within the Afghan government. (U.S. military photo by LT Charity A. Edgar, CSTC-A Public Affairs)
National Procurement Authority develop a plan allowing for incremental reforms at the tactical and operational levels that have significant strategic impacts on the larger Afghanistan procurement system. Te uniqueness of
advise and assist effort is that the impacts reach beyond just the Afghan national defense and security forces. Te reforms proposed
by the National In partnership with the authority, this CSTC-A train,
Rairigh and her team took a page from Joint Publication (JP) 5-0, “Joint Opera- tion Planning,” and used an operational approach to map out Ghani’s vision for procurement reform. For such an approach to succeed as envisioned in JP 5-0,
elements of Procure-
ment Authority ultimately affect every procurement entity within the Afghan government.
ronment must be synchronized. Tus the team focuses on achieving unity of effort for all procurement entities across Afghanistan by synchronizing elements within the procurement system with the
the operational envi-
Army AL&T Magazine April-June 2016
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