By Claudette Roulo
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2014 – Cutting red tape and eliminating
bureaucracy is a priority effort throughout the Defense Department, both the
Secretary of the Air Force and DoD's top acquisitions official said today at
the Reagan Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said operating
efficiently is more important now than ever before.
"We have a combination of world conditions which have
our military perhaps the busiest that we have been in recent memory," she
said. "Things seem to be popping up all over the world in
near-simultaneous fashion. ... and of course there's a certain state of play
now that we're dealing with -- both in the executive branch and in Congress --
in terms of coming up with gridlock as opposed to coming up with solutions to
move forward."
Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisitions, Logistics and
Technology Frank Kendall noted that eliminating government waste requires
"constancy of focus, tenacity and the will to do it. And it takes a lot of
time."
One of the first things Kendall did when he came back into
government four-and-a-half years ago, he said, was to start slimming down the
requirements for program milestone reviews.
"It is a constant struggle to proceed in that area and
to succeed," the undersecretary said.
The Better Buying Power initiatives, begun in 2010, include
a serious effort at eliminating unproductive processes and bureaucracy, he
noted. "And we're just going to have to keep at it, because one of the
iron rules, unfortunately, about bureaucracies is they tend to grow if left
alone," Kendall said.
Acquisitions Review
The undersecretary said he has been working on rewriting DoD
Instruction 5000.02, the acquisitions guidance document that outlines all the
procedures and requirements for program managers.
The instruction also describes the statutory and regulatory
requirements imposed by Congress on defense programs, he said, noting that many
of these requirements are overlapping or confusing.
"I was astonished, I guess, and dismayed at the length
of that section of the document," Kendall said. "Twenty or 30 pages
of tables of requirements, one after the other, after the other."
Working together with Senate Armed Services Committee staff
members, the undersecretary's office quickly put together a short list of
streamlined requirements for the FY 2015 defense budget, he said.
"And we have a longer list we're working on now we hope
to get into the next years' bill,” Kendall added. “That table, that section ...
we're going to cut it in about half, we think."
Smaller Air Force, Many Missions
The Air Force is conducting its own internal efficiency
reviews, James said, noting that they carry a particular urgency for the
service.
"Today's Air Force, in terms of numbers of people, is
the smallest Air Force that we have ever had," she said. "...At the
same time, we also have fewer aircraft than we have had in our history,"
James added. Those aircraft are aging, she noted.
"I don't want to be a ‘Chicken Little,’ but the sky is
falling," the secretary said. At the same time that the Air Force is
shrinking, it's busier than ever and plagued by readiness issues, she
explained.
"Half of our combat air forces -- approximately half --
are not, today, at the state of readiness that we want or need them to be in
the event of a high-end fight," James said. "A high-end fight means
going up against an enemy that has the capability to shoot us down or interfere
with us in some way.
"...We don't want to forever be the best 1980's vintage
air force that money can buy, we want to be the very best 21st-century air
force money can buy," she continued. "So, given the budget
environment ... we've had to make some some tough choices ... every single one
of which has run into some difficulties in the Congress."
Air Force Efficiency Projects
In response to a challenge by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel,
the Air Force will reduce its headquarters by 20 percent by Fiscal Year 2015,
James said.
Additionally, she said, "I'm conducting now monthly
program reviews on the top weapons systems to try to bring my business
experience to bear to ensure that we don't have continual cost overruns, missed
schedules, missed budgets and so forth.
"...We're bubbling up ideas from the field, as
well," James continued. "We're listening to our airmen and
implementing some of their ideas on how to become more efficient."
James said her favorite Air Force efficiency initiative is
called the “'Stop Doing Stuff' campaign.
"That is to say, we are rigorously going through our
Air Force Instructions and we're trying to figure out, 'Isn't there some of
this we can stop doing?'" she said.
On the contracting side, the Air Force is trying to build-in
"strategic agility," which would allow the service to speed up
production and cut costs in its new contracts, James said.
"So we're building-in principles like affordability
right from the get-go. Let's talk about a price point right from the get-go,
build it in, hold to it," she explained.
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