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Home News Archive Pentagon Seeks Early Warning Indicators for Troubled Programs

Pentagon Seeks Early Warning Indicators for Troubled Programs

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In the face of current and future budget squeezes, Ashton Carter, the new Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (USD A,T&L) has a lot on his mind these days. The U.S. Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) has reported that about 95% of DOD's largest programs exceeded original baseline budgets by $300 Billion and averaged two years behind original schedules. Troubled programs (such as Textron's Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter) have been terminated for convenience (T4C) and it is likely that more programs currently are on the chopping block. Mr. Carter is quoted in a recent Aviation Week article as looking fore "earlier ways of assessing troubled programs," so as to identify them before the Pentagon is forced to report "Nunn-McCurdy" cost/schedule breaches to Congress. Mr. Carter also warned program managers that poor acquisition outcomes would lead to program terminations. Aviation Week quotes him as saying, "When we find programs that are troubled, that aren't performing in cost, schedule or performance or that are no longer needed, then we need to stop doing them."

In the same interview, Mr. Carter says he is looking to reestablish Pentagon-industry partnerships. Such partnering has come under fire recently. The Aviation Week article quotes Mr. Carter as saying, "At the end of the day we are totally dependent on ... defense industry. The government doesn't make our weapons, private industry makes our weapons."

NDIAOne organization that fosters such DOD-Industry partnerships is the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA). NDIA has sponsored an Industrial Committee on Program Management (ICPM) for several years. The ICPM mission statement is as follows:

"To provide a forum for senior executives of NDIA coporate member companies and senior Defense Department acquisition officials to meet periodically to review and discuss issues of common interest and concern. Topics for discussion will include program and acquisition management policies, procedures, best practices and issues which impact military systems development, procurement and use."

A recent (June 2009) ICPM meeting featured a briefing on the Navy's Probability of Program Success (PoPS) initiative, in which program health is evaluated on a variety of criteria, including requirements, resources, planning/execution, and external influences. The ICPM regularly discusses "predictive program metrics". For example, in November 2008 the ICPM received a briefing on potential predictive metrics.

So, in response to Mr. Carter's intention to develop better metrics and indicators to help identify troubled programs, and to enhance Pentagon-Industry working relationships, we say -- it's already being done, sir. Have your subordinates brief you on what's already going on, and see how you can facilitate faster and better progress towards the common goals of industry and the DOD.

 

Newsflash

Effective January 1, 2019, Nick Sanders has been named as Editor of two reference books published by LexisNexis. The first book is Matthew Bender’s Accounting for Government Contracts: The Federal Acquisition Regulation. The second book is Matthew Bender’s Accounting for Government Contracts: The Cost Accounting Standards. Nick replaces Darrell Oyer, who has edited those books for many years.