Defense Management Reform: How to Make the Pentagon Work Better and Cost Less

Description

Pentagon spending has been the target of decades of criticism and reform efforts. Billions of dollars are spent on weapons programs that are later abandoned. State-of-the-art data centers are underutilized and overstaffed. New business systems are built at great expense but fail to meet the needs of their users. Every Secretary of Defense for the last five Administrations has made it a priority to address perceived bloat and inefficiency by making management reform a major priority. The congressional defense committees have been just as active, enacting hundreds of legislative provisions. Yet few of these initiatives produce significant results, and the Pentagon appears to go on, as wasteful as ever. In this book, Peter Levine addresses why, despite a long history of attempted reform, the Pentagon continues to struggle to reduce waste and inefficiency. The heart of Defense Management Reform is three case studies covering civilian personnel, acquisitions, and financial management. Narrated with the insight of an insider, the result is a clear understanding of what went wrong in the past and a set of concrete guidelines to plot a better future. Cover Contents Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction: The Problem of Defense Management Finding a Targeted Solution to the Right Set of Problems Getting the Initiative Approved Getting the Initiative Implemented on a Lasting Basis The Case Studies 1 Civilian Personnel Reform at the Department of Defense The Civil Service Demonstration Projects The Enactment of NSPS Legislation The Implementation of NSPS The NSPS Pay-for-Performance System Labor Relations and the Collapse of the NSPS The Road Forward 2 Lessons from the Never-Ending Search for Acquisition Reform The Need for Acquisition Reform 1981–1982: The Carlucci Initiatives 1983–1985: The Era of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse 1986–1992: The Packard Commission 1993–2004: Reinventing Government 2007–2014: The WSARA Era Assessment The Road Forward 3 Auditing the Pentagon The Road to the CFO Act and the Goal of a Clean Audit The 1990s: The Bush I and Clinton Administrations The 2000s: The Bush II and Obama Administrations Assessment Afterword Notes Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z