By Emelie Rutherford
The policy-setting defense authorization law President Barack Obama signed recently calls for the Pentagon to work to expand the defense-industrial base and consider securing the rights to more weapon systems’ designs.
The newly approved fiscal year 2011 authorization act includes these and other Pentagon-acquisition reforms, because the Implementing Management for Performance and Related Reforms to Obtain Value in Every (IMPROVE) Acquisition Act of 2010 was attached to it.
Members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) introduced that acquisition-reform bill on April 14, 2010, after the HASC’s Defense Acquisition Reform Panel held congressional hearings for a year.
The new act mandates that Defense Secretary Robert Gates create a program “to expand the industrial base of the Department of Defense to increase the Department’s access to innovation and the benefits of competition.”
The program use tools and resources from the government and private sector to indentify and communicate with “nontraditional” suppliers. The new law calls for the industrial- base program to include a “continuous effort to review the industrial base supporting the Department of Defense,” including the identification of markets of importance to the Pentagon.”
The “industrial base” is one of four areas the IMPROVE provisions target, along with the defense-acquisition system, acquisition workforce, and financial management.
The act also requires the Pentagon to issue guidance for “periodic independent performance assessments of elements of the defense acquisition system.” Those assessments “may consider” the “appropriate acquisition of technical data and other rights and assets necessary to support long-term sustainment and follow-on procurement,” the law says.
Other acquisition-reform aspects of the new law include a requirement that the Department of Defense’s director of small business programs review and report on ways to eliminate barriers non-traditional contractors have to contracting with the Pentagon.
The bill also calls for improving the structure and functioning of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council and requires a report by the Government Accountability Office on potential changes to the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System.