Defense acquisition chief requires program managers to sign tenure agreements
Department works to reduce turnover, cited by GAO as cause of cost overruns and delays.
The Defense Department's chief acquisition official is reinforcing a policy to make leadership continuity a top priority for weapons programs, in the wake of an annual report that cited frequent management changes as one cause of cost overruns and delays.
John Young, Defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said at a media roundtable on Friday that the department has been working on an initiative to reduce turnover by requiring program managers to sign service agreements. Under these agreements, program managers serve three or four years or to the nearest milestone in the contract. They also delineate cost, schedule and performance expectations for the length of the agreement.
The department has had a policy of service agreements for program managers on the books since December 2005, soon after a Government Accountability Office report identified management instability as a hindrance to the progress of weapons programs. A follow-up report in November 2007, however, showed that Defense still was working to implement tenure requirements. As recently as May 2007, the department was issuing memos on program manager agreements clarifying what exactly they would include, when they would be signed and by whom. GAO's recently released annual report on weapons programs showed the problem to be persistent.
Frequent staff changes, especially during the development stages of an acquisition, can "make it difficult to hold one program manager accountable for the content of the program's business case when it is established and to ensure that a knowledge-based acquisition process is followed," GAO wrote.
The report noted that there was substantial program manager turnover despite Defense's policy requiring managers to stay at least until the completion of the major milestone nearest their four-year tenure mark. For 39 major acquisition programs GAO examined since March 2001, the average tenure for program managers was about 17 months.
Young said, as of the last few months, agreements are required for major acquisition development programs at the department level and include the signatures of program managers, acquisition executives and finance managers. He encouraged the military services to set the same requirement.
"It is just a good business practice," he said.
Young said he does not believe that requiring service agreements with tenure obligations would hamper recruitment. "If you're in the acquisition business, people aspire to be program managers," he said.
Another important aspect of program management, Young said, is to give managers the tools and resources they need.
"It is devastating to the acquisition team to accept or be given a budget that you cannot possibly execute, knowing that it's going to come to bear a year or three down the road," he said. "No one remembers that you were given an underfunded budget, so the whole enterprise -- from the requirements community, the warfighting community -- views that as a failure on the part of the acquisition team."
The key, he said, is to help program managers "engage in the [budget] process, instead of being victims of that process."
Speaking of changes at the top, time could be running out for Young to implement major culture changes in the Defense acquisition community as this administration draws to a close. But the procurement chief does not see the clock ticking.
"I absolutely reject this 'time left' discussion … in my business it doesn't matter," Young said. His office is launching "programs that will deliver three to 10 years from now, so every day we're laying in place the path to the future that will be executed and endure well beyond me."