Well, these workers in the war industry who make the death bombs and missiles might have to find more useful work......life sifting sand at the beaches.
FROM DEFENSE ONE
Pentagon's Kendall: Budget Climate 'Worst I’ve Seen' for Planning
The current budgetary environment for Defense READ WAR is “the worst I’ve seen for doing a sound plan and executing it with any kind of confidence,” the Pentagon’s top acquisition official said on Thursday at a think tank discussion of procurement reform.
Frank Kendall, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, added that the federal pay freeze, furloughs and government shutdown have combined to make recruiting a professionalized acquisition workforce “a real challenge” because “people now are not sure they want to be in government because it is not a secure place to work.”
Reciting a litany of familiar characteristics of the budget climate--a divided political establishment, Congress alarmed at costs and contractors scattered across all states -- he noted that this was the situation in 1794 when the fledgling U.S. government commissioned the original six frigates built for the Navy.
Problems in acquisition, Kendall said, may involve “fundamentals, not just the organization of the Office of the Defense Secretary or the contract type,” noting that both fixed-price and cost-plus contracts mysteriously seem to produce the same results. Such fundamentals include the need for “professionalism, in both industry and government,” he said, as well as leadership, hard work and the courage to step back and rethink a business deal when “it is more expedient just to spend more money.”
The solution “is not a checklist -- it’s about people and their ability to do their jobs,” he added. “It’s complex. There’s no easy answer.”
Kendall’s recent efficiency initiative called Better Buying Power 2.0 was criticized, he said, for rising from 20 items to 35. “But you improve by attacking on a lot of fronts,” and there must be a willingness to take risks, though well-managed ones, he added.
Some contractors are being “paid higher fees for poor performance,” he said, summarizing the proprietary information on profit margins he’s seen in Defense’s Annual Report on Cost Assessment Activities.
Kendall said he has recently spent weekends editing a coming update of Defense’s main acquisition directive (5000.02), which he joked might “help get me on The Daily Show.” Working with Congress to review all the laws and rules “piled on” since the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of 1986, the staff revising the directive will “emphasize simplification and more tailoring to structure of an acquisition, not the one-size-fits all that makes life difficult for program managers,” Kendall said.
He said he hopes to establish mandatory professional qualification boards to provide a stamp of approval on senior acquisition leaders, from program managers to chief engineers, based on their experience, education and references “to strengthen the overall level of professionalism.”
While praising industry as a vital part of the national security force structure, Kendall said he has been seeking company input on identifying “things that are adding costs but not adding value.” He also wants to publish more procurement data, which, though requiring years of preparation during which officials rotate to new jobs, document “who was in charge of a contract and made the decision that all was okay.”
On the budget, he said the Pentagon has been “scrambling” to limit damage that the 8 percent cut is doing, warning that the ability to move funds around will be far more limited if sequestration remains for fiscal 2014. He acknowledged that he has deferred some contract awards to conserve funds for the future.
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