Pentagon renews opposition to chief management officer

Pentagon officials are resisting a congressional proposal to create a senior-level Defense Department position focused on management issues.

If authorized by Congress, the new position, chief management officer, would be an appointee nominated by the president for a seven-year term, subject to the approval of the Senate. The appointee would focus first on developing and implementing a strategic plan for business process reform.

Bradley M. Berkson, acting deputy undersecretary of Defense for logistics and materiel readiness, said in written testimony before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee last week that the Pentagon does not need another layer of management. The creation of the new position, he said, would make it harder for the defense secretary to get "vital and timely information" on the workings of the department.

Berkson said that changing the Pentagon's business culture needs to begin at lower management levels.

David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, disagreed, saying in his testimony that creating the chief management officer position is essential for the Defense Department to reform its business operations.

The Pentagon, Walker said, "continues to confront pervasive, decades-old management problems related to business operations and the support of [military] forces which cost the American taxpayer tens of billions of dollars a year."

Eight of the 25 areas of federal management that GAO has designated as high risk are unique to the Defense Department, and another six are governmentwide issues that involve the Pentagon.

Walker said that the Office of Management and Budget and Congress have not worked closely enough with Defense to resolve its management problems, partly because "nobody's in charge of business transformation."

Last month, Michael Wynne, the Defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, told the Senate Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee that the Defense Department is "much more efficient than GAO thinks," and said that the chief management officer position "would just add an additional layer of management, which is the last thing we need."

Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, told the committee that he believes creating the new position is "probably a pretty good idea."

But establishing a senior-level job is not in itself a "silver bullet," Johnson said. "Some of the people in my position have been effective," he said. "More than that have not."

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., chairman of the Armed Services Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee, has sponsored legislation (S. 780) to create the chief management officer position. The bill has won the support of Sens. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio.