As to CFO and Clinger-Cohen, I agree they are impediments. But show Congress (and its GAO puppets) how to do things and then ask for the process to be changed. Revisions like the new weapons acquisition legislation — creating more reporting bureaucracy — just add to our self-imposed problems. Nothing will change unless a Gordon England or hopefully Bill Lynn go out and kick some b**t. A good starting point is to take their money away. But not put it into a BTA (which is just a public works project for B-school program management types).

The Defense Business Systems Management Committee, chaired by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, was created in Feb 2005 and has met every month since then to review all business-IT system investment decisions in the Department involving more than one million dollars. That hasn’t stopped ‘disasters’ like DIMHRS from happening, however. So, as appealing as Mr. King’s call for “old-fashioned leadership” sounds, bad leadership is NOT the reason the Department has had so many problems over the last 15 years trying to get things right in this area. There is another reason and it has to do with specific requirements in the CFO Act of 1990 and the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 (both of which became law largely in response to GAO lobbying) that have given DOD leaders no choice but to pursue “enterprise-level solutions” (like DIMHRS) that would become the magic bullet making the department’s “business” (i.e., support) operations more effective and efficient. We now have more than 15 years of history — with leaders in place as talented as Gordon England was and as Bill Lynn may yet prove to be — that shows the CFO Act and Clinger-Cohen Act approaches not only don’t work, but actually make things worse.

[The DBSMC, by the way, was established in 2005 in response to hysteria whipped up by the GAO (and reinforced, unfortunately, by then Comptroller Dov Zakheim, who should have known better) that DOD’s spending on business IT systems was “out of control.” (The GAO actually — and unprofessionally — used those words in a May 2004 report.) At the very time GAO and Mr. Zakheim were asserting that the Dept had “too many systems,” and that business-IT-system spending was “out of control,” the Department’s FY 2004 budget request for business IT systems was for $18.8 billion ($14.0 billion for operations and maintenance and $4.8 billion for development and modernization). That figure represented 4.9 percent of the DOD’s total budget request for FY04. By way of comparison, private-sector spending on business IT systems in the same time frame, expressed as a percentage of revenues, ranged from 1.7 to 7 percent, depending on industry involved, suggesting that the DOD’s spending was, in fact both reasonable and to be expected.]

BTA just adds another costly layer, with a separate set of rules, and which is overstaffed with contractors. And creating a “Chief Management Officer” amplifies the problem of poor management. The Deputy Secretary of Defense, who has filled that role, should be chief head-banger. Otherwise, we should fire him!

If we can’t fix the bureaucracy that supports our troops, how do we ever expect to win a war?

SEE THE DODIG Report for the $16.7Billlion required to have a military personnel and pay system!!

Yes, it would be very interesting to know what caused the estimated life-cycle cost of DIMHRS to increase from $1.78 billion (a Dec 2008 MAIS estimate made by the BTA) to $26.67 billion (a June 2009 estimate made by AT&L and the Services).

David Fisher is the head of BTA and Dr. Nancy Spruill is the Director for Acquisition Resources and Analysis in AT&L . Mr. Fisher reports to the Deputy Chief Management Officer, who hasn’t been appointed yet, so he reports to nobody. Dr. Spruill reports to the USD(AT&L) and has held her job for more than ten years. She led the USD(AT&L)-directed re-evaluation of DIMHRS that came up with the $26.67 billion estimate.

Mr. Fisher and Dr. Spruill should both be called before Congress to explain.

(If for no other reason because there are another fourteen MORE “DOD-wide-system” acquisition programs, separate from DIMHRS, being “managed” at the BTA. One such program, for example, is the Defense Agencies Initiative (DAI), which is supposed to show that financial management for 28 different Defense Agencies can be accomplished using a single, commercial-off-the-shelf Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. You can’t make this stuff up.)

But the problem here, as is clearly evident from the DoDIG report (which is itself defective), is no leadership. Someone needs to bang heads together, field a best-of-breed system and turn off all the other stuff.

I think the IG’s report shows (it certainly didn’t mean to do this ) that the Department finally has a USD(AT&L) willing to push back against the conventional view (long promoted by the GAO, and hopelessly embedded in the charter of the BTA) that for DOD “business transformation” to succeed, the DOD must be viewed, wherever possible, as a “single corporate enterprise.” The problem is that the Army, Navy, and Air Force — because their missions are different — each have their own, distinct history, culture, and operating methods. As a result (and understandably enough), they each would like to develop and operate their own systems for personnel management, including making their own improvements to their existing systems. The Acquisition Decision Memorandum signed by USD(AT&L) last September, which cancelled DIMHRS as a DOD-wide (i.e., “enterprise-level”) program, allows them to do that. It remains to be seen whether that will be cheaper and more effective than continuing with DIMHRS (how could it not be, right?), but OUSD(AT&L) now believes it will be, based on the latest business-case analysis it has done. The DODIG’s report shows the DODIG is not convinced, but offers nothing to make its case beyond the usual, GAO-style hand-waving about the alleged advantages of the “enterprise-level” approach.

The DoDIG’s report (available at: http://www.dodig.mil/audit/reports/fy10/10-041red… is actually mainly about criticizing a Sept 2009 USD(AT&L) decision to walk away from the “DOD-wide” approach represented by DIMHRS and to let the Services to develop their own, separate systems for HR management. Part of the problem is that the DODIG doesn’t accept an OUSD(AT&L) business-case analysis (released in June 2009) that (probably) contributed to the USD(AT&L)‘s Sept 2009 decision to shut DIMHRS down. In particular, the DODIG is understandably suspicious about cost figures in the BCA that say DIMHRS life-cycle costs would be $26.6 billion, as opposed to a MAIS life-cycle-cost estimate of $1.78 billion submitted six months earlier. But waht makes the 26.6 billion figure even more suspicious to the IG, however, is that it makes the BCA’s life-cycle cost estimate for the separate-Service-solution, $14.2 billion, look like a bargain. As previous commentors have said — the whole thing is a big waste of money, no matter what figures are used.

Reading between the lines of the OSD response to the IG’s report, however, it’s pretty clear the real reason DIMHRS was canned is NOT because of its costs (either way they are too great ) but because the Army, Navy, and Air Force — understandably enough, given their differences in mission, culture, operationally , etc.– finally managed to convince USD(AT&L) that the “DOD-wide” approach was simply never going to meet their needs.

The real lesson of DIMHRS is that at some point DOD leaders need to stand up to GAO and its supporters (they are legion) and point out DIRECTLY that the DoD is not, never has been, and never will be the “single corporate enterprise” that the “architects” of business transformation have been saying it “must” become — no matter how much it costs and how many years it takes to get there. Why? What’s wrong with separate, smaller solutions.? (Maybe they really would be cheaper, by the way.)

“Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System [DIMHRS]- DIMHRS is designed to provide an integrated, multi-component personnel and pay system to the Services. In August 2009, the Department asked the Committee to transfer fiscal year 2010 funds requested for DIMHRS under the Business Transformation Agency to the Services for execution in accordance with a recently completed program restructure that transitions this capability to the Services. The Committee has accommodated this request as detailed in the tables accompanying this report.”

The tables referred to show the DIMHRS FY2010 budget request was for $70 million to be managed by the DOD Business Transformation Agency. The Senate Appropriations Committee removed $51.3 million from the program (by reducing Army R&D by $30.8 million and Air Force R&D by $20.5 million, which otherwise would have transferred to BTA). That leaves $18.7 million for the program in FY 2010 — to be managed by the Army (I think, but I’m happy to be corrected on that).