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Department Updates
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DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
The President's Management Agenda Goes To War
Much has occurred in America since the President released his
Management Agenda last summer - to say the past year was
eventful is an understatement.
Perhaps no other Department has been more directly affected by
the events of September 11th, than Defense. In these past
months we have responded to and continue to prosecute a war
against our enemies half a world away.
Concurrently, we are undergoing transformational changes on a
scale unprecedented in the history of this Department. Separate
from rebuilding the Pentagon after the devastation of the 11th,
the building is also undergoing a multi-year infrastructure
renovation project that would challenge any organization -
public or private.
Given the seriousness and sensitivity of our overriding mission,
this alone could stand as testament to our capabilities and
dedication to duty.
 Commitment
Secretary Rumsfeld and the entire defense establishment have
embraced the President's management objectives. We
are committed to implementing these five initiatives without, of
course, losing sight of our primary mission: the defense and
security of America.
To facilitate the implementation of the PMA, we have established
a Senior Steering Group (SSG), comprised of SES and General/Flag
officer representatives from the Services and DoD components.
The main goal of the SSG is to coordinate actions among the
principals and ensure compliance to the PMA. The SSG meets
monthly.
DoD believes the scoring process to be collaborative. As such,
the SSG performed its own internal assessment of the Department
against the initiatives and forwarded its findings to OMB for
comment and discussion.
Human Capital: Civilian and Military
With 2.7 million active and reserve men and women under arms and
a civilian workforce of nearly 800,000, clearly people are most
important asset, and their qualities and skills essential to our
success. Toward these ends we have formulated a comprehensive
strategic human capital plan.
Parenthetically, this plan goes beyond that envisioned in the
PMA in that we are also transforming our military forces.
Commercial Services Management
With respect to competitive sourcing, we have agreed with our
colleagues at OMB to review 226,000 positions following
traditional or revised A-76 processes and by following a “core
competency approach.” We will meet our target of 15% of those
positions in FY03.
Thus far we have identified 10 pioneer projects for
consideration. This is critical in our efforts not only to
become more efficient, but also to return military slots to the
business of war fighting.
Financial Performance and Budget & Performance Integration
We are actively pursuing a comprehensive financial modernization
project in order to consolidate approximately 1,700 (at current
count) disparate systems and practices DoD-wide and have awarded
a major contract to IBM to this end.
Within the federal government, our Program Planning and
Budgeting System (PPBS) - developed nearly 40 years ago is the
stuff of legend for it actually matches performance to budget.
We are working with our OMB colleagues to improve further our
performance-to-budget metrics.
E-Government
In the age of rapidly changing technologies, we are all very
sensitive to the importance of electronic government as one of
the most efficient tools in our arsenal. We are working to
build well-defined, manageable objectives.
Indeed, setting such goals can have a high payoff: our
experience in deploying our DoD-wide HR data system is that for
a combined project cost of $420 million our system will yield
savings of $200 million per year over a 15-year life cycle.
Vision
Thus, our pledge to achieve the goals and objectives of the PMA
is based not only on our commitment and loyalty to the
President, but also our obligation to our incomparable military,
our superb civilian workforce, and of course, our citizens.
Sincerely,
David Chu
Department Updates:
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