Improving National Defense Acquisition and Resource Management through Enterprise Organization, Capabilities Assessment, Radical Reengineering, Capital and Longer-Term Budgeting and Privatization/Marketization

Abstract

Our guiding assumption in organization of our research and this report is that to understand the defense acquisition process and reform arguments, it is necessary to know something about the organizational and managerial context in which such reform must take place. Consequently, this report for the 2007 NPS Acquisition Symposium is organized into four parts: (i) an analysis of the Enterprise organization and management initiative now underway in Department of Defense (DoD), demonstrating (ii) how it encompasses the new approach to defense capabilities thinking, planning and management as a preamble to our argument for acquisition system and process reform. Along the pathway to presentation of our acquisition reform proposals, we show (iii) the role of better business practices and information technology in adding value to DoD acquisition and resource management in terms of improved organization strategy based on lessons from economics in the private sector in evolving from bureaucracy to hyperarchy and netcentric organization. It this section, we draw lessons from the manner in which businesses operate in the new global economy and how the development of new information technology should enable managerial reform.