Improving Acquisition Efficiency Through Better Policy
From AFCEAWiki
TRACK SESSION ONE BALLROOM D ~ Policy, Governance, and Workforce Tranning 9/9/09 Gary Bliss...director of enterprise information, may be starting in a new job shortly. What kind of changes are you trying to accomplish with this act?? What were you really trying to do? points were we in the congress have concluded we have failed in our constitution duty for oversight in the acquisition the lanq creates new channels and institutions in which they expect will function as "watch dogs" the dept of structure to much in the support of existing programs… no one is standing back and asking how is the really being done. CAPE is being done by scalings, also now the cost community how to get confirmed. PARCA- Performance Assessments, Root Cause (what was the route cause of the problem..it will have to report to congress its activities Performance assessment does not mean program analysis. They are not responsible to wave one program against another, Root Cause of PARCA assumes the EDS function is screened, the final thing regarding Root Cause analysis the first is commitment really matters and when changes are made its important, second DoD holds the Gold if we are disappointed about the outcome the first place we need to look is in the mirror. If we misrepresent things in proposals and then wonder why it happens who fault is that? Finally we are in a business of risky projects the question isn’t if we are going to draw black balls on the earth the question is when we go after something that doesn’t pan out how fast do we recognize it and the problem.
Sue Payton…had 27 years of success in senior industry and government, is president of SCI Aerospace Inc What encourages her… 1. Cost assessments and program evaluations to look at the confidence level of cost estimates. 2. There is much more on development planning, systems engineering, and web systems in the very beginning. The efficiencies forcing the DoD to develop train recruit and make sure the efficiencies are being built in the very beginning. 3. To look at duel sourcing 4. There is a requirement that the sect provide uniform requirements. Also I find that cash bonus will be given to those who do excellent jobs encourages me. 5. The emphasis on improving the training and the quality as something that should be looked at as past performance but I am discouraged we are creating another.
Ron Kadish~Improving Acquisition Efficiency Though Better Policy
Today’s improvement is tomorrows acquisitions, we have the best weapons system in the world we have ever seen
Why do we still feel dissatisfied about how long we have been performing this system? Maybe because we like it that way? We tend to define efficiency expectations in terms of cost and there is tension in the performance vs. Efficiency, and we are doing very difficult things for our war fighters and we wouldn’t have the best weapons in the world if we did not do that. We Ought to know what the right answer is, that this country is so good we should know ten years in advance what its going to cost, but this is not true, not in what we do every day, so there is a balance we have to have, can we achieve efficiency in performance? YES! But not on everything. And that leads to the idea that can you really live with a 60/70/80% solution? Well its hard to even define the percent of the solution, but its accepting something isn’t perfect and cancelling things that are not working right, we should do more than that. What does this all lead to??? We need to support these people who do this very hard job, and we tend to declare victory on a matter and then change our mind so it becomes important that its not about process, its about the people getting the job done.
Brig Gen Peter Hoene
Likes hockey was a hockey player…No one scores by themselves
Went to LA AF base and worked on black program.
Works at DISA…JPECO for NECC and PEO for C2C, coordinates different activities for ex…DISA, ARMY, AIRFORCE, NAVY, USMC, NECC…
Sometimes it is all about the money NECC is a great concept…Migrate from the GCCS-J FoS—tightly coupled SW implementation TO NECC—Loosely coupled in SW in a SOA environment They are starting their end to end testing now, however they were not able to get to “milestone B” because the army command did not feel we have the technology readiness… But the point is “there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in it success, that to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarms defender in those who may do well under the new.” Challenges for S/W Intensive IT Programs 1. Mgt and Governance of Joint Programs 2. Alignment of the Joint Program and the Service Efforts 3. DoD/ Congressional Support 4. T&E and Certifications and & Accreditation timelines 5. Milestone B-Key Changes a. Technology readiness assessment i. 2366A legislations requires DDR&E to sign of on TRA for MAPs b. We have to balance the risk of getting something to the field with the risk of not getting it to the war fighter 6. Business Model for Industry & Gov’t
Q’s
• Whats the nature of the environment the technologies itself that would change the systems?* What you see in the policy is one size fits all and the reason for that is because no one has come up for a better system, and time is important. RON
Gary found it as unacceptable when working in the DoD that Cost was a problem.
Sue believes meeting timelines is what’s very important*
• What are you pointing radar gun at? The program manager or ??? …* the real function is to key up, the key was the need, and the need is for the review and understanding and perhaps the decision making and responding, and the truth is we don’t respond well…that job is not actually a PA job its just the cost of the schedule performance* • What do you intent to accomplish with…and what is your goal?? * It aint over until its over… and ive tried to give you my sense, my model is certainly something that is not earned value but actually the physical cost and I was tasked with saving that because it was about to be dropped and the first thing I realized was when you deal with a value screen the private sector has one person in charge who is ready to get answer ~Bliss~ • *Commercial best practices are good, and I don’t meant to say we shouldn’t do it but think the assumption is not founded we just have to be realistic about that application and in face I noticed that with some interest in order to fix some of the problems the people with the government are trying to fix that and I think there is a two way street*~RON~ • What is the impact on baseline programs and milestone A? What do you feel its going to do to our programs? * I want to say something and I am not sure if I should do so, I am not sure for the reasons you sight I think we are just going to have to find some way to work around this with congress unless things have changed dramatically which I don’t think they have, its just going to be very difficult and no one know exactly how its going to work ~ Bliss~ and Sue says… when I read into this in relevant to milestone A the time on the hand in the back to the people who are trying to get it right…we need congressional help and we need congress to help us and when money is being carved out of the acq budget for plus ups the interest congress has in some areas is how do I get my piece of the acq pie therefore I want to know everything possible so I can get my piece of the pie…and very few of the board of director are getting their piece of the pie and they are not just interested in that pie because they are willing and wanting to help, Ron says if you don’t know what your doing then how do you know how much it should cost?? So for what its worth that will be one of the tests and there will have to be people in leadership to stand up and say to the congress we just don’t know what the cost is.
