The U.S. military is a lean and effective war-fighting machine, but its support network is still bloated and inefficient, Secretary of Defense William Cohen said Monday at a briefing on the Pentagon's business reform initiatives.
Cohen reiterated that the goal of the Defense Reform Initiative is to streamline the support side of DoD so that it matches the military side in efficiency and effectiveness. Defense Department business areas such as contracting, procurement and personnel are being reformed under the initiative.
"Our forces excel in every mission to shape and respond to world events, even after major reductions in spending and size and reorganizations in structure that have occurred since the Cold War," Cohen said. "However, the side of the Defense Department whose mission is to support the men and women in uniform has not reduced, restructured, or pursued innovations to the same extent."
Nevertheless, DoD officials said the initial results of the Defense Reform Initiative show DoD's support side is slowly catching up.
Public-private competitions to perform Defense business functions, for example, have reduced annual operating costs of the functions involved by 30 percent, DoD reported. This year, DoD plans to put 52,000 jobs in such functions up for competition with private firms. Another 53,000 jobs will be put up for competition in fiscal 2000, and more than 48,000 in fiscal 2001, Cohen said. The department will conduct competitions for a total of about 229,000 positions from 1997 to 2005, and expects to save $11.2 billion over that period.
Cohen released the update on the reform initiative in CD-ROM format-a nod to DoD's goal of eliminating paper-based communications and paper-intensive processes. The CD-ROMs cost $220,000 to produce, but they were done "in the spirit of the new information age to communicate with the broadest audience," Cohen said.
The Pentagon is embracing electronic commerce as another way of reducing paperwork. DoD created a Joint Electronic Commerce Program Office last year to facilitate e-commerce. DoD wants to make all aspects of contracting for major weapons paperless by the year 2000. The DoD E-Mall, an Internet-based catalog shopping system, has also supplanted what was a labor- and paper-intensive supply process, the department says. Today, 19 catalog vendors offer 300,000 products on the site. In June 1999, DoD will launch a pilot program to allow foreign military sales via the E-Mall.
The governmentwide commercial purchase card, intended to reduce the time and paper involved in low-cost purchases, has been a successful part of Defense reform, Cohen reported. Card use was up by 25 percent in the first quarter of 1999 compared to the same period last year. More than 160,000 DoD employees now use the cards. DoD's goal is to have 90 percent of low-cost purchases made with the cards by 2000.
Base realignment and closure is another big money saver, DoD indicated. The first four rounds of base closures will save $14.5 billion by 2001. According to Cohen, 60 percent of the civilian jobs lost from base closings have been replaced nationwide.
Cohen said that in his own office, 356 positions have been eliminated and 566 people have been transferred to other jobs. The Office of the Secretary of Defense has established a career transition office to help downsized employees find new jobs. So far, DoD reports, 38 people have been placed in jobs outside the department. Cohen needs to eliminate 82 more jobs in order to meet his streamlining goal, and the Pentagon says those cuts will be made by the end of this year.
More information about the Defense Reform Initiative is available at the Defense Department Web site. Copies of the CD-ROM can be ordered from the site.
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