Pentagon business systems acquisition overhaul due shortly

The Defense Department's upcoming overhaul of its process for buying business systems could be the leading edge of a potential sequence of Pentagon acquisition reforms, a senior Defense official said Thursday.

Paul Brinkley, co-director of the Business Transformation Agency and Defense deputy undersecretary for business transformation, said a formal announcement of the business systems acquisition revamp should happen within four weeks.

The revised process will be more nimble, responsive and agile, Brinkley said.

"We cannot take five years to field a business system … if you cannot field value from a system on that timeline then we need to figure out why," Brinkley said. "The acquisition process that we apply for weapon systems is not appropriate for business systems, given the technology."

The Pentagon's business systems acquisition process cannot be as agile as private industry's, Brinkley said, but "it can be orders of magnitude" more efficient.

The new process should not be described as streamlining Defense business systems acquisition because that "creates an impression that we're going to be relaxing our process in terms of due diligence," Brinkley added. Instead, he said he would describe it as "as rapid and intense."

Recommendations from the Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Project, a seven-member acquisition panel made up of industry members and authorized by Gordon England, deputy secretary of Defense, will be used in formulating the new processes, according to Brinkley.

Late last year, the panel suggested that the Pentagon move away from cost-based competitions for contracts, establish a new program fund and give contractors more information about its needs.

The new business systems acquisition processes will be announced by the office of Kenneth Krieg, Defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, which oversees the Business Transformation Agency.

Last month, the agency announced that it had met three-quarters of the milestones it established six months ago in the first in a series of biannual reports that Brinkley hopes will document steady progress in reforming the Defense Department's business systems.

"If things start moving backwards, and I'm afraid to report it, then I'm not doing my job," Brinkley said at a conference hosted by Troux Technologies, an Austin, Texas-based information technology firm.

Congressional leaders are pleased with the agency's transparency, but their feedback is cautiously optimistic, Brinkley said.

"It would be inappropriate for them to be happy right now," Brinkley said. "We need several years of continual progress before I'd want the word 'happy' to be said about anything. We are certainly getting a lot of support."