Defense officials catalog acquisition initiatives

In a recent jargon-packed report on new initiatives, Defense Department officials assured lawmakers they would transform contracting practices that have been criticized as slow and disjointed.

The report, prepared in response to the 2007 Defense authorization bill, amounted to a laundry list of new and old initiatives and programs. The list was broken down into the following headings: workforce, acquisition strategy, development of contract requirements, budgeting, industry collaboration and system-level organization.

Kenneth Krieg, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, introduced the report as building on common themes from four recent studies that have addressed procurement issues: the Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Project; the Defense Science Board Summer Study of Transformation; a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and the Quadrennial Defense Review.

"A sense of urgency has been established by the department to streamline and simplify the acquisition system with aggressive initiatives to provide lasting solutions for predictable performance," Krieg wrote.

But many of the initiatives described reflect long-running department efforts or implement simple, fundamental concepts. The workforce section, for example, depicted the foundering National Security Personnel System as a key workplace improvement without addressing the roadblocks it has encountered from ongoing lawsuits and union opposition.

The report said that "the department recognizes that its personnel are the most highly valued resources." But a section on the successes of workforce training remained silent on reports that the acquisition workforce is understaffed and ill-equipped for the increasingly complex demands placed on it.

Officials discussed the need to complete purchases more quickly -- or, as the report put it, to "shift to a time-definite development process." New strategies also will be used to better incorporate risk factors into decision-making, officials said.

In a discussion of budget-related initiatives, the report cited cooperation with the Office of Management and Budget's Program Assessment Rating Tool process, through which the administration has, over the past five years, reviewed the performance of almost all federal programs.

The report also highlighted initiatives linked to contingency contracting, an area that has seen increased scrutiny from Congress as reports have emerged of overcharging and poor contract performance in Iraq.