Change The Culture And Acquisition Policies At DoD

The House and Senate Armed Services committees are locked in an important battle to determine how much acquisition reform this year’s National Defense Authorization Act will embrace and what kinds of changes the Pentagon will be subject to. Sen. John McCain is pushing sweeping changes to how the Pentagon buys its weapons, including provisions that would give the four armed services more power in the process. Rep. Mac Thornberry wants important but less sweeping changes adopted. Into this wades Beth McGrath, who served until recently as the Pentagon’s first deputy Chief Management Officer, a job that included Milestone Decision Authority over a range of major information technology programs. Ms. McGrath offers her vision below of a US military that can buy IT faster than Moore’s Law changes it. Read on. The Editor.

Frustration in Congress, the Defense Department and the defense industry with the long times it takes to deliver weapons because of too much bureaucracy has sparked a set of reforms in the House and Senate versions of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA ).

But there’s something missing: better alignment of information technology (IT) solutions with business objectives and a more innovative culture that supports new ideas and risk.

Many of the reforms proposed by the House and Senate Armed Services committees not only focus on improvements to the acquisition process, but also start to simplify what has become a highly complex and often arcane, bureaucratic system. HASC Chairman Mac Thornberry has placed needed emphasis on reducing or eliminating unnecessary layers of regulation and oversight, which complement the the Pentagon’s Better Buying Power initiatives already underway.

While these proposed reforms are much needed and have often been discussed, actual implementation has been elusive. Why? The answer is simple: process. With pace slowed by sheer process, many government IT solutions are simply not able to match the quick pace of innovation and become outdated by the time they are delivered.

There may be a bright side to the fiscal pressures that continually tighten IT budgets. There is now a strong desire across government to remove these barriers and enable IT to be delivered faster and more efficiently.

Even while process simplification expedites the delivery of IT capabilities, those solutions should still meet their intended outcomes and effectively service the government’s business needs. Agency leaders should take advantage of the fusion of business and IT as described in Deloitte’s recently released Public Sector Tech Trends, in developing IT strategy more deliberately and within the context of larger business objectives.

So, how can agencies find the sweet spot where IT solutions meet functional needs as well as boast rapid delivery schedules?

• Focus on requirements. Organizations should dedicate the time and energy upfront to define capability requirements and gain a shared understanding of desired outcomes.
• Explore alternative contracting methods. The technology industry has long made use of value-based billing to improve program efficacy and savings. Similarly in government, Share-in-Savings (SiS) contracts can motivate contractors to maximize cost savings on government programs.
• Deliver capability functionality incrementally. The incremental delivery of functionality can reduce the cost of unforeseen changes to existing requirements and allows for the addition of new features that keep the capability relevant to government operating environments.

Policy and process reform, though important, are not enough to drive results. There is a third component: culture. Addressing cultural issues requires a different set of skills and a more nuanced approach.

Essentially, reform is about doing work differently than you do today. That’s a difficult adjustment for any workforce, and is not likely to occur without certain supports in place. Organizations should incentivize and reward those who choose innovative acquisition methods and find more efficient ways to deliver impactful IT solutions.

That said, those employees who strive to innovate but fail should not be punished for it. Failure should be regarded as an acceptable outcome along the road to developing a better system. Investments in a failed acquisition are not wasted if lessons are learned that improve the chances of success for the next attempt.

The success of any cultural shift depends on high levels of trust between those taking the risks and leaders encouraging them to do so. Workers should be confident that their leadership will continue to support innovators even when they fail, and put the support systems in place to allow that to happen.

The NDAA reforms aim to make much needed headway towards the changes in policy and process that will help agency leaders improve IT acquisition. Agency leaders should take advantage of this time of change and go even further by better aligning their processes with business objectives and initiate changes in their cultures to deliver more effective and innovative IT capabilities much faster.

Beth McGrath, a director at Deloitte Consulting LLP, was the former deputy Chief Management Officer for the Defense Department.