Defense business agency meeting goals, official says

The Defense agency charged with transforming the department's business processes will tell Congress next week that more than 80 percent of the milestones in its transition plan have been met, a Pentagon official said Thursday.

The congressionally mandated biannual report, due March 15, will provide an updated enterprise transition plan and architecture. It was produced by the Business Transformation Agency, which heads up a $4.2 billion effort to modernize and improve the Pentagon's business operations.

The agency also plans to continue hiring business transformation experts from the private sector in an attempt to attract talent, under a congressionally approved plan giving the department special hiring authority.

Speaking at a meeting of the Washington chapter of the American Society of Military Comptrollers, Thomas Modly, Defense deputy undersecretary for financial management, said the agency is building momentum and hopes to show marked improvement every six months in implementing the 98 Pentagon-wide initiatives under its roof.

"We promised … that we would miss milestones in the first year of that plan and in every other year of that plan, because it's very difficult to hit every single milestone," Modly said. "But that's OK. It doesn't mean that you're failing."

Army Maj. Gen. Carlos "Butch" Pair, the agency's business systems acquisition executive, is beginning to "sweep up" the 18 programs moved under BTA's oversight, according to Modly, who directs the agency alongside Paul Brinkley, Defense deputy undersecretary for business transformation.

A month ago, BTA released details on the structure and budget of the agency, and a list of its six division directors.

The hiring of 2,500 private-sector employees, using the authority provided by Congress, is part of the agency's goal in becoming a "magnet for talent," Modly said.

"It's a magnet that's going to repel people after two or three years," Modly said. "We want people to come in and then go back out … go out into other parts in DoD and help them transform their business operations."

The agency's effort to attract people from the private sector has drawn criticism from within the department's civilian workforce, according to Modly.

"We've caught a little bit of flack for that because people within the government aren't necessarily that crazy about bringing in people from the outside," Modly said. "But we have to face the reality that the challenges we have are very complex, and we have to have a core level of skills … so we can manage this with some level of success. And that's going to require us asking for help."

The congressionally approved special hiring authority has been used seven times by the transformation agency, and will continue to be used, said David Fisher, director of the agency's Transformation Planning and Performance division, who was one of the employees hired from the private sector under the provision a year ago.

"We have great industry partners," Fisher said. "Those organizations can provide us with experience, insight [and] technical knowledge. We need some of that talent on the government side. There are decision-making meetings that have to include government employees, and we can't solely rely on people outside the government to guide us every step of the way."

Under the special hiring provision, the agency must prove that the skills being acquired do not already exist in the government.

Randy Hite, Government Accountability Office director of information technology architecture and systems, told Government Executive that hiring experts from the private sector has provided tremendous benefits for the agency, but "it's not going to be the silver bullet."

"If you look at what's being done so far through the BTA and through the enterprise transition plan, the human capital transformation aspect of that has yet to be dealt with," Hite said. "When you transform an organization, you transform people, processes and technology. The focus of what's been dealt with … is system- and process-focused. The human capital part is something that's kind of lagging."

Comptroller General David M. Walker told the society of comptrollers at lunch that the business transformation efforts will not be completed under the current administration, and he reiterated a long-standing GAO call for a Defense chief management official, despite the creation of the Business Transformation Agency.

"My view is that there is not a human being on the planet that can do everything that a deputy secretary needs to do in the normal course and stay on top of business transformation," Walker said. "One of the things we need to think about in government [is] that for certain types of positions, we need to be thinking more of term appointments with performance contracts."

Walker said he is a lot more comfortable with where Defense business transformation is headed now than he was a year ago, but added that the effort needs to be sustained.

A financial crunch ultimately will hit the Pentagon, Walker said, and "it's only a matter of when and how badly."

"Every dollar that we waste on a want is a dollar we will not have for a need when the crunch comes," Walker said. "And the crunch is coming."

He added that he was "very disappointed" with the Quadrennial Defense Review, released last month, "because it was an opportunity to lay out the framework to engage in more dramatic and fundamental reforms."