DoD is working to align business operations reforms into its strategic management plan. Image: Jeremy Christensen/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffIt is too early to determine the effectiveness of a new approach DoD is putting in place for reforming its business operations, one that emphasizes aligning those efforts with department priorities and using existing department processes, GAO has said.
GAO noted that DoD business operations—such as for management of contracts, finances, the supply chain, support infrastructure and weapon systems acquisition—is on its high-risk list; although the latest report rated the department as meeting criteria for leadership commitment, it only partly meets criteria for capacity, monitoring and demonstrated progress.
The 2021 defense budget, which eliminated as ineffective a prior position of chief management officer for the department, meanwhile directed it to produce guidance and a reporting framework to measure the progress of its reform efforts—and required the GAO to assess its response.
The report said that after eliminating the CMO office the Pentagon reestablished and updated internal organizations whose roles that office had taken over, and also made other organization changes as required by a later law. The result is a “bottom-up approach to reform that emphasizes the organizations’ responsibility to initiate and implement business reforms” rather than the prior top-down approach, it said.
It said DoD is working to align business operations reforms into its strategic management plan, which includes performance goals associated with specific priority areas, such as ensuring supply chain resilience and modernizing and consolidating networks and services. It also has taken steps to build reform efforts into the department’s existing planning, programming, budgeting and execution process, and has issued a performance improvement framework as a guide for defining, identifying, tracking and reporting on existing and planned reform initiatives, GAO said.
It said that while DoD is now better positioned to develop and track reform efforts, it “is still laying the groundwork for the path forward, including through recent revisions to the department’s governance structure for reform and continued development of the processes and systems to support its new approach. As a result, it is too early to determine whether the new approach is working.”
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