DoD reform initiative takes to the Web

Managers in the Defense Department:

Have endless downsizing, reengineering and reinvention initiatives turned you into a jaded cynic? Are you ready to tell Al Gore what he can do with his Hammer Award?

If so, then a new Web site may help re-ignite the reform fire in your managerial heart.

The new Defense Reform Web site is an Internet-style broadside for managers who are finding that inefficiency, like hell, is not easily conquered.

The Pentagon launched the Defense Reform Initiative, an effort to improve business operations, in November 1997. The initiative includes public-private competitions for 237,000 civilian jobs in the department and an effort to make the procurement process completely paperless.

During the public-private competitions, DoD managers must review their operations to find ways to improve efficiency and then prove that the Pentagon will spend less keeping the operations in-house rather than outsourcing them.

To inspire the ranks, the new Web site offers a quotes section with motivational words from Defense Secretary William Cohen, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, and others.

"To carry out our defense strategy into the 21st century, with military forces able to meet the challenges of the new era, there is no alternative to achieving fundamental reform in how the Defense Department conducts business," Cohen says.

The site also offers vignettes describing the fruits of reform. For example, the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service privatized waste management services for military installations in Europe. That freed service members from trash duty, giving them more time to focus on their main jobs. The department also saved $310,974.

Managers can download the original Defense Reform Initiative proposal on the site and get background information on other DoD reform efforts, including acquisition reform. And a comments section of the site allows users to send messages to the initiative's Pentagon coordinators.