GovernmentExecutive.com

Return to Article: NEWS+ANALYSIS Assessing Acquisition

• 13332
  

  Will the DoD acquisition community really improve itself from a panel of mere insiders? Please! A large part of DoD's systemic problems in its acquisition community is purely self-inflicted, self-defacing, and self-defining. The unpleasant but honest truth of the matter is that this U.S. taxpayer salaried administrative support community is nearly 100 percent inbred in the mid and upper GS grades with either merely current or prior DoD GS acquisition or budgeting staff, recently retired active DoD military acquisition or budgeting staff or prior DoD acquisition contractor staff. And being so rampantly inbred it is hopelessly mired in groupthink mentality and organizational mediocrity. This 100 percent U.S. taxpayer funded subset of support staff even takes an outrageous and self-serving step to ensure even further inbreeding by using and wrongfully abusing Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) criteria, an act of Congress that was foisted upon DOD years ago as a result of malfeasance and mediocrity that was fostered by and as a result of the rampant inbreeding in the very same community in the 80s and 90s, to further insulate itself and it taxpayer funded workforce from legitimate competitions in the mid and upper level management positions.

  Michael Smith Posted November 8, 2005 6:19 PM