By Army Sgt. 1st Class Tyrone C. Marshall Jr.
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, April 13, 2015 – The basic idea behind the
Defense Department’s Better Buying Power initiative, now entering its third
iteration, has been to improve acquisition through continuous improvement in
many areas simultaneously, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief said here today.
Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition,
technology and logistics, discussed acquisition reform and the tenets of Better
Buying Power 3.0 in a speech at the Brookings Institution – a public policy
think tank located here.
“Underlying all of the Better Buying Power initiatives has
been the idea that the way you … improve acquisition is through a process of
continuous improvement,” he said. “The way to make progress is to make
incremental progress in lots of different areas all at the same time.”
Kendall said he’s seen many “fads” regarding acquisition
reform that have attempted to do a few big things in trying to make a huge
difference.
“History doesn’t suggest that that’s a success,” he told the
audience. “In fact, it’s suggested when you try to move everything in the same
direction and sort of adopt a uniform policy, you tend to do as much breakage
as you do fixing of things. And you have to be very careful about that.”
Kendall said that’s been the idea with Better Buying Power
since the initiative debuted about five years ago, when Defense Secretary Ash
Carter was the department’s top acquisition official.
Legislation A Limited Tool
Kendall applauded the amount of discussion about acquisition
reform that has included members of Congress, but he added that he thinks
legislation is limited in what it can do.
Citing his own background as an engineer and technical
manager, Kendall said “there’s very little that you can do from the point of
view of legislation that will make somebody a better engineer, or a better
program manager, or a better contracting person.”
“At the end of the day,” he said, “whether you’re in
industry or government, that’s the sort of thing we have to have. We have to
have people who are very, very good at what they do.”
Increasing Professionalism
One of the fundamentals of Better Buying Power, Kendall
said, is the increased emphasis on professionalism and on building
professionalism within the workforce.
“There’s an awful lot that I can do with existing
legislative authorities,” he said, “but there are some things that I can’t do.
I can’t, for example, remove some of the things that burden our program
managers.” One initiative DoD officials shared with the House Armed Services
Committee is designed to remove some of the overhead placed on the department’s
people that actually distract them from doing their real jobs, Kendall said.
Motivated by Technological Superiority
Kendall said innovation is a key component of Better Buying
Power 3.0. “That’s, I think, part of a growing recognition that we do have a
problem with technological superiority,” he added. “The thing that motivated me
more than anything else to do another edition … of Better Buying Power was that
concern.”
The initiative, Kendall said, is set up with a “punchline”
of achieving dominant capabilities through technical excellence and innovation.
“That’s a return to focusing attention on the products that we build,” he said,
“and the superiority of those products relative to potential adversaries.”
Kendall said while earlier versions of Better Buying Power
were about efficiency, productivity and professionalism, version 3.0 is a
“change back toward thinking about our products and focusing particularly on
the results we’re trying to achieve.”
Better Buying Power’s Cultural Aspect
A cultural aspect also runs through every version of Better
Buying Power, Kendall said.
The first version emphasized cost consciousness and best
buying practices, he said, and the second iteration moved in the direction of
professionalism and judgment.
“Now in 3.0,” Kendall said, “it’s a focus on a culture of
technical excellence, which is the fundamental thing underpinning of 3.0. I
want to emphasize more than anything else this is more about continuity than
about change.
“The idea here is a shift in emphasis -- not a fundamental
break with what we’ve been doing in the past,” he continued. “It’s a
realignment and a slight shift in direction, but not a fundamental change.”
Grooming Potential Workforce
In addition to discussing Better Buying Power 3.0, Kendall
noted a longer-term concept: the need for science, technology, engineering and
math education.
For the sake of the country, the economy, quality of life
and national security, he said, it’s “very important that this country develop
and nurture people who are going to go into these fields and contribute to our
society.”
“The department has a limited role in that, but it has a
role that matters,” he said. “You need to capture people when they’re young, or
you’re not going to capture them.”
While it’s not impossible to go back and get the necessary
technical courses after high school, Kendall said, it’s difficult. “It’s best
if you start out and get those courses that you need to put you on the track to
be in a technical field earlier on,” he said.
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