New Agency Director to Guide DoD Business Transformation

By John J. Kruzel
American Forces Press Service

Feb. 23, 2007 – A new Defense Department agency designed to drive and accelerate improvements to the department's business operations now has its first director. David M. Fisher was chosen as the Business Transformation Agency's director, officials announced during a discussion with reporters at the Pentagon yesterday. Fisher has been the BTA's acting director since November, and also has served as the defense enterprise integration executive and the director of transformation priorities and requirements within the agency.

Fisher thanked Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business transformation, and the department for giving him "an opportunity to take the great work that's already been done to date and grow it."

"This is not a transformation point, I think it's a maturity point," Fisher said.

Fisher said he will continue to execute the planning that has gone into DoD's business transformation effort over the past two years.

"Philosophically, I think I'm perfectly aligned with where this effort has gone over the last couple of years to build that foundation," he said. But planning and executing reconstruction efforts within a department as large as DoD takes time, he emphasized.

Brinkley said Fisher was selected after "a long and thorough" candidate search.

"One of our key challenges has been to create a nonpolitical organization, the Business Transformation Agency, to establish momentum, to deliver measurable six-month outcomes, and to be accountable to the taxpayers and the American people," Brinkley said.

Appointing Fisher to lead the BTA will help sustain this effort beyond the term of this administration, Brinkley said.

"(We) want to set this effort up to be successful and sustained in the long term for the Department of Defense," he said.

"The DoD is a massive enterprise, because it was the first organization to computerize - it's got computer standards of every standard from 1950 to 2006," Brinkley said. "Our job is to modernize that.

"Big corporations take years to modernize," said he continued. "You're not going to modernize the largest industrial enterprise in the world in a four-year presidential term."

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