 Well, this looks like a 12 step program for recovering defense acquisition types. I mean I Welcome we're glad we're glad you're all here We appear to be going through another one of those great cycles Life in Washington where we've rediscovered the need to reform ourselves and You know, it's we've got a very rich history of failure that we can point to that That we can we can look to hopefully the day we'll have a maybe we could take a little bit fresher view of the whole thing First let me just say thank you. Thank you all for coming my sense is that There may be a modest opportunity to get a little bit more done in this environment The secretary has put down some pretty big markers Over the last couple of weeks and I've had a couple of conversations with him and others in the department to say this This is a that's a pretty genuine effort. It's not This is not kind of like one of your Potemkin Village initiatives. It's designed to look good to get you through the year I think there's there's some something quite real and genuine here and And probably the one of the most interesting dimensions of this one is that There is going to be there are very real and rather tough budget targets that have been put in from People but the services get to keep the money now. That's that's a fresh Change if it works Now, you know, Washington is the kind of place where you know, you offer up your neighbor's meal to for so that you don't have to give up your own and see if that gets past the boss and so it's it's it's an invitation to Serious knife fighting in town, but we're we're in the front end of it. And so the question is going to be made rational now, you know, I think the starting point is the legislation from a year ago and I will protect the The innocent with this observation that in talking with a few senior people in the department and Asked their observations about the bill. They said we were able to keep it from doing any damage Okay, you know, there's a pretty far gap between the perspective of the professionals in the building and the people who wrote the legislation I mean a thought this was best thing since can beer and The people in the building thought that it's well, we at least were able to keep it from doing any damage Okay, now that's a that's a broad gap, you know, and We're now trying to figure out Where is this thing really going to take us? Now David's been looking at it and and look we want we want this to succeed I mean, I think there are some elements of it I certainly still have some lingering reservations about but it doesn't help to be fighting a decision that has been made It's it's our goal is if it wasn't the best decision How do we turn it into the best decision and how do we implement it and make sure that this is constructive and I think it's in that spirit that we want to bring all of you together today it David's you're gonna lead I think you've got just a very brief time to stay in front of this mob You know and with your ideas and then we're gonna open this up for everybody to take over but Thank you for doing it and we'll let you get this thing started. Thank you. So oh, I should just just say we want to Just welcome Alexander Weiss and his team from the European Defense Agency Alex is right down here and they're in town this of course is Like all things Europe hopelessly confusing to an American but has Really great promise, you know, I mean, it's the sort of how does Europe come together? And it needs to come together needs to come together as an integrated whole now I also one last anecdote, you know, I remember one time being in a At a dinner party with a senior Russian general and he was sufficiently into his into his cups You know so that he said he said I now know what your strategy is You give all of your services of enough money so they can defeat each other and still beat us So we know a lot about rivalries Here in the United States and we celebrate them And so we ought to be pretty modest about saying that EDA is what it's got in front of it It's a new experiment. It's going to be extremely important and we want to be helpful. So welcome Alex We're glad to have you and your team here David. Let's turn to you You want this we can turn that off? I'm going to use that want to add my welcome. I suspect that To the Europeans in the room Dr. Hammeries comment that Your experiment is something we don't necessarily understand We might be able to say the same thing about the discussion Into which we're about to embark this morning. It may seem a bit worthless To the outside observer not necessarily you guys because you watch us very closely But to anybody who didn't understand the nature of what we're doing in defense acquisition They would likely look at the discussion. We're about to have and say can't you guys get a real job You know that what is the point of all of this? All right, May 22nd 2009. It was a Friday the president signed into law the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act which was a phenomenally Successful exercise in Congress agreeing with itself Numerous times in rapid succession the bill was introduced in in the Senate Unanimously marked up out of committee past the floor unanimously a parallel bill the Skelton McHugh Bill was introduced in the house Came out a committee with unanimous support came off the floor with unanimous support in a remarkable Display of adhering to regular order a conference committee was appointed it convened it actually conferred on the bill Produced a decent conference bill and conference report Which was unanimously passed by both houses and signed into law by the president in a time that took I think less than four months You could almost use this as a case of how Congress works in a high school civics class It may be the only one in living memory that meet that test Which of course raises the question of if something is so quickly done. Can it actually be worth much? Because if we actually had unanimous, I mean even the improve acquisition act had three negative votes in the house side I won't Actually, I probably wouldn't embarrass them if I named who they were because they were actually quite proud of their vote against it but So there's almost always some flake who will stand up and say I don't support that bill and so I'm going to vote against it But in this case I think at least in the minds of both the authors of the bill and those who who pushed for its passage and in fact in the Words of the president himself there seemed to be substance here that people thought was actually worthwhile Dr. Hammer's comment Unnamed, but I heard similar comments from the Defense Department that At least we got out of this with no serious harm and some of that of course actually reflects earlier versions of the bill and what did come out of it some of the Efforts to for instance create an independent cost assessment activity that was outside the normal chain and not even connected with program Analysis and evaluation many in this room opposed and did so on the record and I think that Opposition in addition to the department's concerns led to the structure that's put in place today But what we said at the time and what we were convening here today to do is say, okay Let's get back together after a year and take a look and see how it's working At one point. I actually thought I would call this a report card But then I realized after one year the grade would be incomplete In fact, it's not really clear to me How long we will have to go before the grade is anything other than incomplete in a sense of an academic Exercise of reviewing and pronouncing how done we are because that's the reality of the acquisition change business Is it never gets to the point where you put your feet up and say, okay, we're done Now let's go do something else. This is it's a lifetime of endeavor And you know, I look around the room here and many of you have been engaged in this For most of our professional lives. And so we come to recognize that So instead of a report card, we call it a progress report and what we have attempted to do is First of all define how we're going to measure longer-term success And I think it's really in two ways one is actually whether or not Programs adhere to costs and schedule and performance in ways that they are aligned to and expected to and budgeted for And that was probably the real goal of the act itself But there is actually a second measure and it may be a more valid if more difficult one to measure And that second measure is do we actually deliver the equipment and the capability needed by the war fighters? Which in theory is the point of all this in the first place Although as we well know sometimes there is a gap between what is required and what is needed And that that will come into play later on But by those two measures of success You can't really tell it's way too early So we take a more pedestrian approach from a progress report point of view And that is we look at each of the sections in the bill and we say what's happened in terms of implementation of that section We give you today actually two different documents. What I have just described is the second of those documents. It's a Believe I have a copy here Except I appear to not have it It is called in a sideways title page the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act Implementation progress report and it goes through section by section And I know there are already things in this section that are either incomplete inaccurate or Or have changed Because that happens in this business and it and will continue to refine and revise this But it will be posted and available on our website And something that can be referred to by those who find it useful to go do a section by section analysis And then we put a small text together about an eight page Discussion in summary of what some of the implications of that section by section Implementation analysis would do and I'm not going to go through it in brief. It that would be far to time-consuming and There's actually not much in there that will surprise those of you who keep track of this on a regular basis anyway But let me highlight a few points There are a number of major organizational changes that were called for in the act The establishment of the director of cost analysis and program evaluation and the whole office flowing from that person as a Senate confirmed Presidential appointed position Christine Fox has been in that position since early November and the organization is pretty much up and running It still needs people it still needs capability but it's a Checkmark in the yes column in terms of implementation Similarly with the establishment of the new office of the director of systems engineering The office of the director of defense test and evaluation System engineering had already been established prior to the enactment of the law has been beefed up and its role has been somewhat expanded Both of those two organizations DT&E and systems engineering were placed in OSD Under the director of defense research and engineering At the time that was the place where they were where they were organized Some have raised the question as to whether that's the appropriate place for for an organization to be and I leave that Question for later discussion here if anyone wants to raise it the fourth is the office of performance Assessment and root cause analysis affectionately known as parka You don't want to wear this parka Actually, you would like to not ever be anywhere near this parka because it means that you didn't do so well And that office took a while to stand up, but Gary Bliss who many of you know is is the director Resources are being sought and eventually will be applied to that office as well But just in the nick of time because the improve acquisition act that passed the house has expanded their responsibilities well beyond IMDAPs to as far as I can tell darn near everything so They're gonna they're gonna before they even get their arms around their current challenge if that is enacted into law They will have additional opportunities. So from an organizational perspective those pieces are kind of up and running There are a host of process changes that come into play cost realism better upfront assessment particularly What we used to call milestone a which sometimes now is not a milestone, but A better reporting which better is from the point of view of those who receive the reports not necessarily those who have to Prepare and send the reports And from a process change point of view much of the directive Instruction for that process chains was issued by the Under Secretary for Acquisition Ash Carter when he signed the directive type memo on December 4th of 2009 and laid out the implementation steps for Wasara But the real process change that is is it producing results that are discernible are better cost estimates being used in the budget for Budgetary decision purposes do they get reflected in the program schedule and structure that's approved at the milestones That is playing out Program by program item by item budget by budget There's very little in the FY 11 budget that reflects this new structure and process There will be more one can presume in the FY 12 budget, but we won't see that until next February So we're a ways away from being able to to discern that Those of us who you know professionally watch the waters to see what's churning underneath at the Pentagon Are able to detect some activity which indicates Debates over cost that seem to tie back to a more realistic set of cost estimates But it's a little early to judge whether the turmoil at the surface of the water is actually going to produce anything different Once the wave actually reaches the shore Which will be when the budget is delivered to Congress Finally, there are a number of policy issues that sort of rise above the level of process change a very strong Re-emphasis not surprisingly Because Carl Levin who pushed this is the father of the competition in contracting act and was the senator who when Frank Carlucci Brought his original 31 Initiatives up to the Congress senator Levin leaned forward and said mr. Secretary aren't you missing one? And so competition became the 32nd initiative in Frank Carlucci's acquisition reforms The and and so senator Levin put a strong emphasis in in wassara on competition it reinforced the requirement that had already been levied in the revised 5,000 point oh to DoD instruction to require competitive prototyping Except when we don't that exception of course is not in the instruction, but it is in the practice But that emphasis on on competition and competitive prototyping was strongly reinforced in in wassara, and it remains something that DoD does when it's convenient easy and affordable and Struggles with when it's hard and expensive and when the payoff is well beyond The near-term cost the near-term costs are too hard to swallow This of course has been true even in rich times, which we've had for the last decade It will become much more difficult in the leaner times that that face us down the road one final policy point of course was the question of implementing stricter rules with respect to organizational conflicts of interest and Here's one where those of you who watched the legislation play out There were originally some extremely stringent requirements, which would almost have forced companies to divest themselves of entities that were operating if you will on both sides of the organizational line and Let and the final final bill provided both more flexibility and really left the ultimate implementation up to the Defense Department There is now a draft out through the Federal Register for public comment I think the public comment period may actually have closed. No, it's still it's still open on On a revision to the regimen by which we determine organizational conflict of interest my reading of it is it won't solve the problem and But since it's only a proposed rule that's out for comment We'll have to see what the final element comes into play, but it is certainly an element of wassara that Was a very strong point of the legislation that still remains to be implemented and there's a significant policy issue associated with it That kind of policy question of course flows into areas beyond wassara wassara other than Even even in the organizational conflict of interest was just aimed at major defense acquisition programs the mdaps that are the The lifeblood of defense acquisition But there as in a number of the other policy areas the policy implications of what you do for major weapon systems Has enormous impact on the overall acquisition process and acquisition structure, and that's one of the underexplored areas Where both the department's implementation and in some ways the Congress's own understanding of the legislation It has passed starts to fade as you cross that boundary from from mdaps into Into the broader acquisition system So overall I think our our judgment from a progress report point of view is on a pure checklist basis Much of the things that needed to be done have been done There are lots of overdue reports to Congress, but but as you know, that's not an unusual situation You know very rarely do it does Congress put in the law that somebody goes to jail if the report is not Submitted on time you pay a price, but you pay that price somewhere else But other than other than that much of the debt many of the deadlines and much of the action required by a specific deadline Has technically been met There is perhaps some bit of a missed opportunity here in that the implementation was done Sort of one section at a time rather than an attempt to step back and take a comprehensive look at do We really want to use this opportunity to revise and reshape the broader structure and the broader system I think it was deemed that that might be both too hard and too time-consuming But there's no documented record of that and so the net effect is one where the implementation was done On from a from a checking the box point of view quite thoroughly and broadly The ultimate integration of those into a final product and a changed outcome remains to be seen So that's kind of where we stand on this I think from our perspective this is going to be a living ongoing activity will continue to monitor this updated periodically probably as events warrant when a big change occurs or Again, particularly when we get a lot more evidence one of which could be next year's budget Those of you who watched secretary Gates's speech out at the Eisenhower Library in Kansas or read the subsequent reports of it Know that he has in fact Recognized quite clearly and publicly both the reality of the future as he sees it and is issued a challenge to the department That says you know what I'm working on this I'm going to be here to get it into place that means in the FY 12 budget and the in the future year defense program That'll flow from that. That's a significant step for this secretary and a very powerful challenge whether or not that money the 15 billion or more that that he seems to think is out there can be found instituted and Put into the budget and made to stick Many of us have been down that road a number of times and it's funny how those cuts Somehow the money keeps finding its way back in when it comes to overhead and operations And I look around the room and I see a number of folks who have Donned the armor and climbed aboard the horse and tilted at those windmills in the past and you know The windmills are still going and our armor has long since been shelved and so others are carrying that now but but if secretary Gates is as serious about this as he seems to be and his track record as he actually notes himself of Success when he takes things on in a visible public focused way says that the rest of this page has not yet been written and The reason I tie it back to this is because ultimately the impact of wassara and of the changes that are accompanied Wassara will be seen in the programs and the program structures and the deliveries that come from that and as we all know One of the most significant challenges is will you actually put as much money in there as you need to execute the program that you know Is going to be the case wassara is not silent on this point It requires in fact that do d fund its programs to the 80% confidence level Now it doesn't define how you're going to determine what that 80% confidence level is Nor does it specify why 80% is the right number and some have speculated Including authors of the bills that that the number might need to be changed but the reality is that No matter what the right number is the real test is and the real hard challenge is keeping that money in the budget when you Don't have enough money to go around So that's what we're watching for as time goes forward we have a number of parallel efforts underway looking at Issues like inherently governmental functions and and how you do a good cost comparison of government employees versus contractors Looking at questions like the implementation by the White House of its own new guidance and policies on on contracting acquisition noted in the president's own Memorandum of March 2009 on on government contracting efforts to improve Government contracting these extend both beyond major weapons systems and beyond defense to the entire federal government But they all tie together and so we watch all of those as well. So that's our plans Let me now pause take a break. I'll take a sip of water and and we'll Throw the floor open for discussion and question the ground rules that will follow there number one This is on the record and for attribution. It's being Videotaped it will be this session will be posted on our website as well So I say that both as a as a an invitation and an alert to you Because you know, we will we will know who you are and what you said along the way Although those sitting along the back wall will be hard to get on camera. So you probably are safer than than the rest of us are the I Would ask that if you Do have something to say or a question you'd like to raise etc That you indicate if you have a name tag by putting your name tag up on end And I'll call on you when And then you can put it down when I do if you don't have a name tag You'll have to use what God gave you your left hand your right hand or something like that and that that will work just as well So let me pause through the floor open and and ask for questions comments And I do have some I'll call on in case Have none in that in that regard There's a microphone if you if you wait speak into the mic that way we'll pick it up as well So I'll like give the honor General Scantz. Do you want the first comment or question, sir? Dave I would like to Go back to a fundamental which at the end of your assessment You said more about personnel than we're sorry And if I went back to the 90s when we cut the acquisition workforce in half It was not done in any Orated manner it was a numbers game, which the personnel people did and so the retention of skills In acquisition was not a priority It was just you get rid of people by the numbers the net result is when we suddenly Turned around found out that we had gutted the acquisition workforce then the question became how do you replace these kind of skills and We haven't done a very good job of doing that for a number of reasons one is that Their services are not prone to develop and protect and educate an Acquisition work force so that the people can see where they will gradually go in the system You know, I think we lost a lot of bright people because they took a look and said This ain't the career field that you think it is and a lot of them went off to industry now today when we look at it You know rebuilding that workforce this legislation from Congress that says you can hire many people to re-establish this and That's going to take a while and the education process takes a while and the most important thing Is you don't automatically get experience? You know, you can have a master's or a PhD or whatever else it is But if you don't get out to the field and work at it You know, you don't establish your bona fides so to speak and You know in the Air Force that are quick to tell you that it takes ten years to get a good fighter pilot I would suggest it takes ten years to get a good acquisition guy You know, if you have a major multi million dollar program You're contracting senior contracting people better be at GS 15 level and have enough experience Behind them in assignments to really have a handle on what they're doing If you just do gap-filling from wherever you can find it Then you're going to have government people across the table who are really not up to doing what needs to be done and so How you rebuild that workforce is A very very serious problem and you've not been able to get a handle on it because it's like a ten-year exercise And you know who's going to be around for ten years to help make this work? and so I Think that is a major challenge and I would think it deserves Some kind of review in and of itself That's a that's an excellent point The need for further review we highlighted it as you note perhaps more than the law itself did in part because we recognize the accuracy of what you've said the Government's capability has been dramatically diminished and it took way less time to get rid of people than it takes to add them back I Would note that in 2007 when when I was part of a review of Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. We found at the time that the contracting workforce Had about 58 percent were operating Fully qualified that is they had both the experience level and the training for their position in Theater it was only about 37 percent which obviously is a bit of a problem I looked at data recently from the end of 2009 and while the numbers for Iraq and Afghanistan are up The overall numbers for DoD are actually down despite three years of emphasis on this And the problem isn't the training We actually are able to get people through training whether it's level one level two or level three The problem is you can't get years of experience without the clock passing You don't get ten years of experience by working twice as hard for five years Even though that's actually kind of what we're putting people through and I think there there there needs to be a Recognition of that at the same time. I think there's a different challenge We don't have enough programs to put people on to rebuild the capability It used to be that by the time you became a senior program manager You would have worked on two or three or four very significant programs and there just aren't enough now So your suggestion that the time is right for review of this may may well have merit I do think though that in the realm of those who care about that there's general agreement Across the board whether it's the executive branch the Congress the Defense Department the White House the industry itself Even scholars and pretend scholars Would agree that the time is right to put the energy into this and sustain it over the long haul And I think we may be able to provide that ten-year view, but it's gonna take the ten years And we need to keep track how we're going Dave. Let me make one more comment In the Air Force like the other services if you were assigned to a major new activity Your first inclination was to call in the IG and Have them survey this whole enterprise that you're going to take over I Think in dealing with the acquisition workforce If I rule the world I would audit Air Force Navy Army OSD I Would want to see how big The workforce was what the skill set was What was short what was missing and what the experience level was and that kind of data is available But the personnel system will shy away from trying to do that But if I were gonna run an enterprise, I sure want to know Where I would be in terms of the acquisition workforce. Where's ground zero? We will we will take that as an offer to help us on that process and we'll move forward there So I saw that Gene Porter had his hand up Gene if you wait for the mic there and identify yourself Thank You David my compliments to CSIS for laying out this compliance matrix So it'll be interesting to see how much pushback you get from the department as to the accuracy of your Characterizations of step taken but as you pointed out looking ahead There's a few clouds on the horizon and there's heavy lifting still to come I would be interested in your views and those of the here on What you see as unintended consequences of the wassara act that may be May be coming down the pike the question of unintended consequences of course is one that Congress Asks thoroughly and often as it's moving forward with legislation and yet we still have them when we finish up in the process here I Have only two thoughts there But then I'd love to hear the comments of a couple of others in the room who've had to live with this When you're on the receiving end of any significant legislation It always looks different than it does when you're at the sending end one of the unintended consequences is on the increased amount of reporting and the increased amount of revisiting of decisions if you will for anything that's Passed milestone B and run into trouble. You may have to go back and revisit the milestone This could easily create a situation and I suspect it has in ways that we can't yet see because the Reports have not yet come forward Where DOD is going to end up using substantial amount of pretty precious management time Documenting decisions that everybody knows exactly where it's going to come down already The you know I Was present at the creation of Nunn-McCurdy and the idea back in 1982 was that somehow Having to certify that you were going to keep going on a program that was in deep trouble Or kill it was going to produce more kills It has not actually done so it turns out that getting a certification is much easier than killing a program But we knew that 28 years ago and we've known it every year since then So piling on additional reporting requirements may not actually lead to more program kills And and I think that's one of the unintended consequences. Are there others who see John? Do you see any unintended consequences here that are worthy of note? How's that good, okay, I think one of the other unintended consequences may be If if the Congress puts pressure on the department to implement this in a very vigorous way and the focus Remains at the major defense acquisition program level in the department You only have so many acquisition people to pick up on what a general scantz was saying who have so much attention in so much time And I think that what one of the outcomes I see with this bill is a big shift in resources and attention Into the major defense acquisition program area to fully implement this while you have growing and in fact a larger dollars going through on areas like services and other IT and other areas like that which require Some specific expertise. It's somewhat different than the hardware side And so I think that that the challenge for the department will be in the midst of their efforts to rebuild the acquisition workforce Meeting the mandates of this with these people and not letting the other areas be in any way neglected because the mandates are coming from Congress in Those areas too. Thank you Dave when nickel you have your your request up I wonder if I could give you the floor to ask your question But first ask that you comment on the unintended consequences pieces as well. Is that too much of a That's where I was going. Good. Thank you. This one really pushes my buttons. I Think park had a number of good ideas in it But at a strategic level, I think it embodies two errors One or at least potential errors, I think it has a tendency to increase tribalism at the OSD level and Tribalism at the OSD level. I think has gotten to such a magnitude that it is a major detraction to the ability of that organization to function at all and Second I think you touched on in a sense is the emphasis on more and more reliance on process You put tribalism together with process and day by day people work the process not try to achieve results Thank you. Those are both good additional unintended consequences. I'm tempted to say it's a little bit like pornography You'll know it when you see it I an example from The period I served in the building was the antagonism between PA&E and controller and neither of them liked AT&L very much and if you take a look at the Ambitions of the large organizations in OSD policy the resources clusters AT&L I think it's fair to say that they all have imperialistic designs on running the entire department And and the result is a fair amount of effort dissipated in border conflicts that should be spent on actually getting results I'm going to call next on Bob Sewell, and then I have Dave Patterson after him Bob Well, I was going to comment on the question on the unintended consequences And for one of one of the big parts of course the legislation was the effects on PA&E and now CAPE And you mentioned that there were those of us who thought it was a bad idea to have Separated out the cost function from the other parts of PA&E and that that was avoided in the legislation I think that's what the people in the department met in the quote that John Henry had But the other part of that that is still opened a question as to how it'll turn out is the more subtle effects on the rule of CAPE now within the department because you have a Function that was traditionally the classic inside the building function now with substantial reporting requirements and testimony requirements, which are both a large time sink for the director Christine Fox as well as put her in a difficult position in those Activities in terms of maintaining the you know confident advisor to the secretary within the department While she also has the responsibility to testify To the Congress on issues and you know has the very difficult problem of defending the president's budget program Which is her obligation and at the same time Answering truthfully and with credibility the questions that the Congress will ask on things like cost Which is part of you know her legal requirement of the legislation. So how that plays out is could potentially be Intended consequences So do I get right that you think that it's possible that her advice might be watered down or diminished in some way Internally because she would be concerned. She'd have to testify about it before the Congress Well, yes, or how the department involves her in decision-making Or how she's viewed on the Hill when she answers questions and has to you know, give very carefully nuanced answers You know in order to to walk that fine line and then of course the credibility of the office in on the Congress will Have a big effect on whether the current arrangement is sustained or not. I Don't disagree with that, but ultimately It seems to me possible that the real results of that will be measured more by The outcomes of the programs, but of course it's quite possible that Christine Fox will long since have departed as The director and we'll have a different director because so many years will have passed. Is that also a concern you have? well, yeah, and that gets back to the question you had about Your product your report card because I think it'll take ten years to come up with grades and in fact in the near term the there's tension between Secretary Gates's goal and Successful implementation of this act because in my view if you if you believe as I do that There's unrealism in some number of the programs out there the correction of those which is presumably a good thing Will actually require addition of money Unless you are willing to substantially scale back either numbers of programs or their ambitions Which the department traditionally doesn't do very well And so the likely outcome is more money having to be put in a lot of these programs at least in the near term I Think that's exactly the measure, but my suspicion is we actually won't have to wait ten years I think we'll see it in the FY 12 budget and in the fit-up associated with that budget and I have a sense that The the programs that we know that are in trouble that are either going to be Visibly fully funded or not will be will be exactly the signal that we need to look at in Eight months when the president's budget comes forward You know it just one last comment Oh, I agree with that what I meant by the ten years is if you want to say if you want to hypothesize that the act will have made a Big improvement in the process then you have to start with programs fairly early on you know Build a realistic program and have a successful execution of that and in ten years You'll be able to look back and see oh that was a very good program because we followed the act You know I think it'll take that long to get successes through the pipeline and how many new starts Do we have coming up in DOD now that you can count them on the fingers of of your hands? So Let me do you have a one-second or a bottle here. Yeah quick addition to that Strongly agree with what Bob said looked at it from the Narrow point of view of a keg chairman it's going to be very tough to be a confidential advisor to AT&L and a Confidential advisor to his adversaries on the Hill Um Well, Dave Patterson you've had the opportunity to do both of those things so but that's probably not why you had your card up there Floor is yours, sir. Yeah, I kind of find myself between reality and cynicism if that's possible I Think that that what has to happen is you you talk about unintended consequences. I actually think they the consequences are fully intended and What you see is how people react to what what the expectations were But if you take it to a level of abstraction a little bit higher it you find that Here is the Congress Providing direction to a bureaucracy in hopes that they won't be bureaucratic Well, wait, I mean You knew you know it was a snake when you picked it up and We do this over and over and over and and and until Someone says wait a second. We're gonna we're gonna stop this foolishness and we're gonna start and we're gonna start to baseline things You talk about ten years you will have Ten changes in ten years. Where's the baseline? How do you know what was going to work and what isn't going to work? We never give things a chance to do that and so consequently I Think the intended consequence was that there would be more reports that the reports would keep Staffors in business and the staffers would then claim oversight over programs and life would be good One data point that we ran across since we were doing one of our studies is that and I'm probably going to get this Specifically wrong, but generally sort of right One program manager said that he did a quick study and and noticed that if he added the time spent on reports and reviews That it was four program years And I said well, why don't you just we'll just plan for the first four years as program reviews and reports And then we'll get to the business But think about that the entire program four years worth of reviews and reports I mean this this is a terrible waste and and yet That's that's what we're faced with so there are some very fundamental things that need to be changed and And but bureaucracies are going to do bureaucratic things we're going to as General scant said we're going to take a bureaucratic approach to to personnel Okay, who? Who's eligible for retirement? Great those are the people that will get rid of first because they're volunteers Where's all the experience and skill sets and the people who are eligible for retirement? Oh my gosh I think I thank you. Those are those are both very good points I would note from the point of view of unintended consequences or intended consequences One of the things that we rarely do in this business is actually step back and ask ourselves. What's working right? where the programs were in fact we're on schedule under budget delivering performance and In fact, I was having a conversation with a former program manager of such a program earlier this week and he commented You know things were going so well It only took me ten minutes on the hill to get my budget defended and then I got to spend the rest of my time actually managing my program Now I'm thinking to myself. Is that a cause or is that a result here? Because in in many ways, you know, you're going to have a better program if the program manager gets to spend his or her time managing the Program, but the reality is things were going well. And so they had the opportunity to do that GAO does what it calls best practices But best practices is rarely a legitimate assessment of actual successful programs and what all the elements of success were They tend to pick individual best practices and aggregate them rather than actually analyze a specific program success story But I think it might be worth spending some time looking at that question as well I saw Bill Courtney had a hand up along the side here. Is there anybody else that I'm missing that that has a Forge your last year so two significant developments the secretaries Cuts and restructuring of acquisition programs and wassara Which of those two is likely to have a greater lasting impact on how acquisition Reform if you will goes Secretary's decisions seem to be an act of political courage and it certainly has had a broader political salience Than wassara has had But is wassara likely to have more impact or an act of political courage by a secretary of defense I I'm sure there are others in the room. We have a different view. My belief. It's actually the interaction of the two That's what's going to make the difference here Ultimately no amount of better Program judgment or program management or additional reporting Will substitute for the fact that the number one cause of problems is we don't have enough money And we don't put enough money on the programs Along the way, that's not a root cause. That's approximate cause because in fact other decisions are made that contributed that along the way What I think secretary Gates is focused both from his April cuts of 2009 Obviously the the FY 11 budget that was released last February in the QDR didn't have much in the way of new program kills There was actually only one mdap that that gave money back to the budget and that was cgx In terms of FY 11 program kills But I I think that those who think that that meant the end of the Gates impact are only Wishful thinking and when FY 12 comes around you'll see round two of those cuts But if they're only done To pay budgetary bills, then they actually will make the situation worse and we've seen that happen over and over again Now I don't know that wassara itself changes that but it presents the opportunity if used properly For the department to change that and that's really where I see that coming down Let me ask any reactions our final comments will wrap up and be done by 10 Which is the time we appointed that we would release you all back to Productive work or productive unintended consequences comments on on particularly on bill's last question or anything else Bob Jerry Yes, thank you. My mind is a question in a couple of areas you pointed out that the implementation of wassara has gone beyond the focus on mdaps that is the predominant focus of the legislation and That seems to be sensible not only for the reason that if you focus only on mdaps It may as has been pointed out detract from other programs But also some of the good ideas that are in the legislation would seem sensibly applied to other programs Do you see that trend increasing or decreasing in the second year of implementation that is Taking some of the ideas of wassara and extending them beyond the mdap arena I think that there there are many who felt on the congressional side even when wassara was passed I mean typically when Congress passes a big chunk of legislation The attitude is well, let's move on to the next thing now. We're done with this. Okay. It's fixed The whether it's sure or not that's that that's that's generally the the sense But that was not the sense that you got at the time that wassara was passed There was a clear sense across both the armed services committees And and other elements of Congress government operations and Senate Homeland Security and government affairs committee That there was more work to be done part of that you saw picked up with with the house armed services committee Defense acquisition panel and its report that came out earlier this year in the new legislation that accompanied that part of it was Incorporated into last year's Defense Authorization Act the direction to implement changes in in it acquisition Consistent with the defense science board report that was required in the act and DOD is working on its response to that So I think it will continue to go on There's no there's no sense on the part of of the Congress that work is done the danger of course is that Legislation we modified and improved before it's actually taken effect Because my goodness we passed wassara a whole year ago, you know and what has changed since then they still haven't even finished Implementing it yet. So isn't it time to do some more work here? So I think that's one of the dynamics that needs to work in but the the the need inside DOD. I believe Is really a binary pull in in two different directions as John pointed out the focus on M daps And that's really where you get into trouble. That's where you your 110% cost overrun is the headline story the 110% cost overrun on on a on a Services small services task order contract is not going to get the same kind of attention and so the Focus from a governance point of view internally will tend to be there But the problem the problems in the challenges really extend across the board Including rebuilding the workforce, which clearly you can't do just for your 86 favored programs If you will and you've got to do for other things as well Bob Sewell you have the the final words are Um Well, I just wanted to make one comment that goes back to this issue of how do you measure progress in this thing because of the problem with the acquisition system taking so long and and there being a lot of changes along the way For any given program and seems to me and this is something you might look into Dave in your in your further explorations is To me the where the rubber meets the road is how does the conduct of the reviews that go on within the department actually change And the ones that you know, Ash Carter and Frank Kendall are preside over as well as their service counterparts and what kind of Information do they have what kind of assessments? Do they have what kind of choices do they have you know when they're making the actual milestone decisions? One of the things that apartment is very good at and this relates back to Dave Patterson's comment I guess about bureaucracies. I think it's true of bureaucracies in general is they're very good at Having someone come in and say I want you to change and saying we're already doing that, right? Everybody recognize that phrase I Used to use that one And that's I think the danger here is that I mean you can go through your checklist here and say everybody checked all the Boxes and if everybody keeps doing what they were doing before then I'm not sure that much is really going to change And so in terms of how kind you know, do we get good? Technical assessments early parts of programs do we get you know the Realistic understanding of the technology challenges and the cost implications of that and do we get the Requirers looking at the trade-offs in light of those kinds of facts and giving the acquisition executives real choices To have realistic programs that meet the needs of the warfighters That's what you really want to have happen and you know these things that the legislation can help with that But not if everybody just keeps doing the same old thing And so that to me would that you could start to see earlier rather you can't see outcomes for quite a while But you might be able to see conduct whether changes are not relatively sooner That's that's actually a very good measure and a very good point to watch. I think that We ask ourselves why did we spend time on this other than the fact that it gives us the opportunity to have a meeting Like this with people that we like to meet with But but the reality is that you know The the value that CSIS will add to this process is Is measured by whether or not it helps the executive branch and the Congress do a better job of executing what they're what they're attempting to do and And so in in that spirit if you will We're very comfortable with the idea that there are errors and omissions and in our report And as Gene noted will be happy to get pushback or the opportunity to be smarter tomorrow than we were yesterday Which which which is always the best thing you can do when you appear before Congress is admit that It is possible for you to be smarter tomorrow than you were yesterday and with their help you're probably going to achieve that That's that would be my my Christine Fox approach if you will but so we welcome input from all of you and Happy to to take that into consideration to go along I think our our objective is both to continue to measure and track this and to report on it in such a way that it Actually does help those who are trying to do a better job Get the support they need and those who are in the way of that to be helped to an earlier retirement than otherwise possible So thank you very much for your attendance and your contribution here this morning and and we'll call you when we're ready to do this again Thanks a lot