TOPICS
TOPICS
New Defense procurement chief lays out priorities
With just four days under his belt, the Pentagon's new head of acquisition is sifting through the massive job ahead of him and establishing a to-do list that includes reviews of major procurements.
Ashton Carter, who was sworn in as the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics on Monday, said Thursday that much of what would have been his first order of duty was accomplished during the lead-up to Defense Secretary Robert Gates' release of the department's budget request in early April. Gates recommended major changes in the Pentagon's procurement priorities, including cuts to a number of programs.
Nonetheless, Carter said examining troubled programs and acting on Gates' plan is his first priority. The new acquisition chief plans to review all the department's projects gradually to ensure they are being properly executed.
His second focus will be on logistics, an area he said sometimes is overlooked. With two ongoing wars and a major shift in combat operations, Carter said, attention to logistics will be crucial.
"What's ringing in my ears is the secretary of Defense's often-expressed frustration that the troops are at war but the building as a whole is not," Carter said. "I don't want him to feel that way about his acquisition operation and logistics operation."
Among the greatest challenges will be refocusing resources from Iraq to Afghanistan in President Obama's timeframe.
"We have quite a lot of stuff to move out of Iraq and into Afghanistan ... that's a non-trivial matter both to conceive and to execute, and we can't afford not to meet those timetables," Carter said.
Acquisition reform will be another priority, he noted. Carter already is looking into the appropriate role of contractors "from Blackwater security in theater to pink badges at the Pentagon" and said he wants to improve the government's ability to acquire products quickly.
Presidential and congressional interest in reforms will be an asset, he said.
"If it is going to be different than other efforts at acquisition reform, it's going to be because of that constellation of people who are interested in taking some risk to do things differently if they can see the payoff," Carter said.
Carter acknowledged the acquisition workforce challenges are "formidable" in a range of Defense offices, including his own. While building a robust, qualified staff will not happen overnight, he said, it is crucial to begin making strides.
"It's a big job to spend this much money on things that are so complicated in such a novel way," he said. "Nobody else buys things the way the United States government buys things, so it's an art to do it right, and you need a lot of the right people."
COMMENTS
- I wish Mr. Ashton Carter, the new Undersecretary of Defense for AT&L all the best in his new job. As mentioned earlier the Department spends over 33 Billion Dollars on IT Business Systems and Infrastructure yearly, and yet cannot standardize across the enteprise because much of that expenditure has been de-valued by the constant investment in a heavily redundant, undisciplined business system investment portfolio. Mr. Carter should look across AT&L and absolutely cut waste and wasteful spending. That will give him the valuable resources he needs to modernize, standardize, and make efficient those business systems DoD transacts it's business on. He now has the opportunity to evaluate these "transformational" entities and ask simple business questions like; "where is the business discipline in redundant systems?" Also; "why is there such a hunger in these "transformational" entities for newer, more expensive, and redundant systems?" These AT&L entities have now served throughout the war; "how have they fundementally changed the way the Department transacts it's business in support of the warfighter and taxpayer?" The answer, sadly, is that they have not, and yet they continue to model "new" business architectures and build on more and more redundancy. Gene Posted June 9, 2009 10:22 AM
- Congress needs to bear the burden of this as well - it is often their policies put in place that allow certain contractors to be favored and get government contracts. Kathy Posted May 11, 2009 8:51 AM
- If this is really true, then the President needs to put more IT personnel in-house instead of contracting it out. For the last 15 years, DoD has lead a conscious effort to contract out 99.9% of IT support. I cannot even remember when I received support from government personnel for IT. Some companies are better than others - but when I was in the Pentagon, unless you were a general officer, forget it. You could go DAYS without a computer system. How is this saving us money? Almost nothing can be done now with a computer. bring back government personnel to support government systems! Kathy Posted May 11, 2009 8:45 AM
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