Ms. Margaret C. Roth
Development of the futures command and cross-functional teams is taking place against the backdrop of a sweeping, independent, congressionally mandated review of how to speed up DOD acquisition and a major push within Army acquisition to streamline processes using authorities already available through recent legislation.
The “Report of the Advisory Panel on Streamlining and Codifying Acquisition Regulations,” known as the Section 809 Panel from the FY16 authorizing legislation, envisions an acquisition system built around positive outcomes—the timely delivery of warfighting capabilities—not perfect adherence to processes.
In January, the 17-member panel released the first of three volumes of observations and recommendations based on its discussions with hundreds of stakeholders from industry, think tanks, DOD and other entities. Volume 1 introduces the concept of the “dynamic marketplace,” an alternative approach to acquisition that would make it easier for DOD to respond quickly to changes in global security threats and make it harder for competing powers to offset U.S. military capabilities.
The current acquisition system is inflexible and fails to differentiate between dissimilar products or services, such as a major defense acquisition program versus a basic commodity, the panel found. Further, it’s a cost-centric system whereby DOD often equates the cost of a product or service with the risk of an acquisition, assigning arbitrary dollar thresholds in the form of acquisition categories that dictate the level of decision-making, the processes themselves and the degree of oversight. Inflexibility leads to unnecessary delays in getting warfighters what they need. The acquisition workforce has neither the incentive nor the encouragement to make decisions, much less take risk, the report stated.
The panel identified five essential attributes of a future outcome-based acquisition system:
Competitive and collaborative.
Adaptive and responsive.
Transparent.
Time-sensitive.
Allows for trade-offs.
The panel’s “dynamic marketplace” is the result when DOD achieves these attributes—particularly effective collaboration within DOD, with industry, and with warfighters who can articulate problems, select the best solutions offered by industry for testing and save time in requirements development. “An inability or unwillingness to collaborate with industry results in DOD lacking awareness of the full range of available potential solutions; creates barriers for nontraditional contractors to enter the defense marketplace; and results in DOD acquiring suboptimal products, services, and solutions,” the report stated. “DOD must foster collaborative partnerships across the entire marketplace to accomplish its mission today and in the future.”
Within Army acquisition, Lt. Gen. Paul A. Ostrowski, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology and director of the Army Acquisition Corps, has spearheaded a campaign to educate and motivate the Army Acquisition Workforce to seek ways of speeding delivery of capabilities by scaling down the processes involved. Ostrowski has visited program executive offices around the country. His message? To serve the Soldier, change the culture. Tools exist to simplify acquisition without special permission.
The current process has “put us in a position where we no longer can keep up with the threat and we no longer can keep up with the advances in technology with the speed at which they are turning,” Ostrowski told an audience at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, in December.
He outlined steps to simplify acquisition during a presentation in January at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, saying that Army acquisition has to “make it such that Soldiers are as force-protected, as lethal and as situationally aware that we can possibly make them because we owe that to them. Changing the culture is not hard in mind, because each and every one of you sitting in this room today … you care about Soldiers. And this is about affecting Soldiers.”
This article is published in the April – June 2018 issue of Army AL&T magazine.
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