Addition by Subtraction in 2023
Congress and DoD must aggressively cut red tape to accelerate capability deliveries.
Congressional members and staffs are actively drafting the FY24 NDAA. As they work through Acquisition matters, instead of creating new pilot programs, strategic initiatives, and organizations to reform the acquisition bureaucracy, recommend focusing on cutting the biggest impediments to speed, agility, and innovation.
Focus on cutting the red tape that has accumulated over the decades driving bureaucratic debt on the acquisition system. Focus on cutting to drive a leaner enterprise.
Defense leaders can also proactively move out to streamline the bureaucracy without waiting for the NDAA. With a clear national security threat from China and Russia, there should be plenty of motivation to clear the roadblocks to capability deliveries.
To figure out where to cut, go outside the Washington beltway. While Pentagon officials and Congressional staffs have ideas on reforms, it’s better to reach out to acquisition professionals on the front lines. Those who are battling the bureaucratic monster every day to navigate their programs through the endless gauntlet to deliver capabilities to the warfighters.
Survey the ~60 Program Executive Officers (PEOs) on the biggest bureaucratic barriers and quick wins to enable them to operate with greater speed and agility.
The survey should be conducted by an independent third party outside the chain of command. Each PEO would provide their top five bureaucratic busting ideas. These may include:
Eliminating a statutory or regulatory requirement all together. Could be for all programs or those that are lower acquisition categories, costs, or risks.
Reducing the size or magnitude of a statutory or regulatory requirement.
Transform/streamline how DoD implements a statutory or regulatory requirement.
Delegating approval or certification of a required element. This includes the various oversight lists that require senior organizations approvals of key program documents.
Empowering acquisition decision authorities to waive certain regulatory requirements for programs with proper justification per approval of their acquisition strategy and/or per an ADM. This would replace a cumbersome waiver process.
Constraining approval timelines. If exceed a review timeline, it either gets elevated to executive leadership to decide or approval is delegated to lower level officials.
The list of ideas should:
Consider improvements across the six core acquisition functional areas (program management, systems engineering, contracting, cost estimation, test and evaluation, and sustainment) along with the budget and requirements processes.
Be distinct, actionable, and easy to implement per an NDAA and/or policy memo by an SAE or OSD. They cannot be overly complex - e.g., overhaul the entire PPBE or JCIDS systems.
The independent party can compile the inputs and provide a summary to DoD leadership and Congress to act upon.
DoD and Congress must continue to partner to drastically reduce the bureaucratic technical debt swamping the acquisition enterprise (and beyond). The industrial age bureaucracy represents one of the biggest risks to our national security.
Not only does the bureaucracy drive delays to delivering capabilities to Warfighters, it contributes to the workforce culture. How many innovators left in frustration because they couldn’t deal with it anymore? How many tech experts don’t join DoD because they know the issues they have to deal with. We must address this issue head on now!
DoD cannot effectively deliver priority capabilities in a timely manner to deter China’s aggression until we chip away at the high pain, low value elements of the defense bureaucracy. Let’s make 2023 the year of cutting the bureaucracy.
What bureaucratic elements would you cut or scale back in 2023?