Pentagon to house business programs in central agency
Various departmentwide initiatives would be included in agency’s portfolio.
The Pentagon is moving dozens of its most extensive business modernization programs under a single roof, officials announced last week.
By creating the Business Transformation Agency, Defense officials will centralize management of several departmentwide programs, including the Defense Travel System, the Pentagon's e-mail system, the Acquisition Spend Analysis Service and the Defense Acquisition Management Information Retrieval program.
Program resources and personnel will be transferred to the new agency by the end of November, according to an Oct. 7 memorandum from acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England to military service chiefs, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense undersecretaries and other Pentagon officials.
Previously, the Defense Department resisted the creation of a senior management position that would focus on departmentwide business modernization, though the Office of Management and Budget, the Government Accountability Office and several senators supported such a move. Pentagon officials feared the position would create an unnecessary management layer.
But Brinkley, in an interview with Reuters Friday, said this is not the creation of a "new bureaucracy." He said recent security threats require a more "nimble, agile and responsive" military and that the consolidation would improve business methods. The Pentagon plans to spend about $4.2 billion on business transformation in fiscal 2006, according to Brinkley.
"This is that moment in time when the need of the mission is going to force the change that we need," Brinkley told Reuters. "The warfighter is absolutely in need of this change."
The agency will help the Defense secretary's principal staff assistants improve business methods, the department said in a release. The military services have had varying levels of difficulty working together, according to reports.
GAO stung the Pentagon with a July report (GAO-05-702) citing persistent weaknesses in its management processes. Defense has struggled to establish an effective architecture that would guide business modernization, GAO said.
But Defense officials said they successfully delivered a transition plan by a congressionally mandated Sept. 30 deadline. According to the department, the establishment of the new agency was a key part of the plan.
Ineffective distribution systems and poor planning kept supplies from getting to troops in Iraq, GAO had found in an April report.
Even projects intended to create efficiencies in business processes, including the department's $474 million electronic travel system, have come under attack. The travel system recently survived Senate attempts to nix it.