Better data and analysis could help the Defense Department and federal government generally make better use of its resources and improve decision making, some former department officials said on Friday.
Money for the federal government will continue to be difficult to come by and the lack of data is an obstacle to being more efficient, Brad Carson, the former Under Secretary of the Army and Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, said at a panel discussion on the defense and industry partnership at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Carson also has served as General Counsel of the Army.
“One of the frustrating things I leave the Defense Department carrying with me is the sheer opacity of the building,” Carson said. “What is actually going on in the department these days is something that even at the highest levels of leadership it is very hard to know.”
Carson said no one in the federal government or the DoD, or even a defense agency, knows how many contractors are working for them.
“We can’t answer the proper costs if we’re going to do a proper analysis of should this be in-house or should we outsource it?,” he said. “What is the actual cost of people?”
Carson said that when he served as the acting under secretary for personnel for a year until this April it was cheaper to hire a colonel from one of the services rather than a civilian on the General Schedule pay system because the particular service paid the officer’s salary.
“We don’t cost our military people at all,” Carson said. He added that often times the work the officer might do for him was “perhaps far beneath the capabilities” of that person. “This too doesn’t make sense.”
David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, said that DoD has better data than it used to but isn’t using it well to analyze.
“And manipulating and analyzing it is easy but we still spend way too much time arguing over whose numbers are right rather than arguing over how to fix the issue and address the issue,” Berteau said. Berteau spent more than a decade working for DoD, most recently as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness. He also has worked in the defense industry.
Berteau said one area where data was used effectively in the past by DoD was in public-private competitions under the Office of Management and Budget A-76 policy. These competitions were suspended by Congress in the 2008 defense bill.
“I think it’s time to reauthorize the use of A-76 and put public-private competition back into play here,” Berteau said. “I know from my own personal experience that the government has to get better when it has to compete itself. And the government wins over half of those historically. And the most efficient organization is the basis by which they do that. It actually saves money.”