The Navy and Marine Corps will contribute $714 million across the next five years to grow the acquisition workforce, as directed by lawmakers in the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization Act, according to Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Victor Chen.
The funds are required under Section 852 of the 2008 authorization act to “ensure that the Defense Department has the capacity, in both personnel and skills, needed to properly perform its mission, provide appropriate oversight of contractor performance and provide the best value for the expenditure of public resources in DOD acquisitions,” according to the report accompanying the Senate version of the bill. Each service is required to allocate funds for this purpose.
The Navy and Marines will use the majority of the acquisition work force funds, about 78 percent across the next five years, to “hire interns, journeymen and highly qualified experts,” Chen wrote in a Dec. 4 e-mail to Inside the Navy.
“The Department of the Navy has a very successful Naval Acquisition Intern Program and hires 400 interns per year,” Chen added. “Section 852 funding is expected to increase intern hiring by an additional 100 per year. In addition, the Navy plans to hire 150 journeymen and up to 30 [highly qualified experts] per year.”
The remaining funds will be used for recruitment and training of acquisition professionals, the spokesman said. “About 16 percent of the Department of the Navy’s allocation will be used for recruiting and retention incentives,” he said. “The remainder will fund leadership development and acquisition training for employees. This represents a balanced approach to building the right workforce between adding new talent and expertise and the retention of critical experience.”
The second story, from Defense Daily titled "Navy Updates Acquisition Instructions, Adds In Gate Review Process", announces some key procedural changes.
Navy Secretary Donald Winter has signed off on an update to the service's acquisition instructions, adding in the new gate review process as well as aligning them with the Pentagon's regulation.
"It's a combination of the DoD 5000 as it applies to the Department of the Navy (DoN) and the Joint Staff Instruction on the Joint Capability and Integration Documentation system that is in the Joint Staff instruction 3170," a Navy official told Defense Daily in a recent interview. "That's the document that describes the requirements process."
The 195-page update to the Navy's acquisition instruction was signed by Winter in November and was effective immediately, the official added.
What the Navy did was take Joint Staff instruction and the Department of Defense (DoD) 5000 regulation, which governs the major weapons system acquisition process, and put the two together in a single source of information for Navy program managers, the official said.
"What's new about this version, it does incorporate the Secretary's new acquisition governance process...that's the gate review," the official added.
The new acquisition effort had been referred to as the two pass six gate process. It is now known as the acquisition governance process, the official noted.
"That's probably the most significant change that's in this version," he added. "The overall intent is to lay out a process for how we go about acquiring capability."
Earlier this year, Winter put in place a new review process for all pre-Major Defense Acquisition Program (MDAP) programs, all MDAP Acquisition category I (ACAT I) programs, all pre-Major Automated Information System (MAIS) programs, all MAIS (ACAT I) programs and selected ACAT II programs (Defense Daily, April 17).
The memo, issued Feb. 26, 2008, "establishes a review process to improve governance and insight into the development, establishment, and execution of acquisition programs in the Navy. The goal is to ensure alignment between service-generated capability requirements and acquisition, as well as improving senior leadership decision-making through better understanding of risks and cost throughout a program's entire development cycle."
"This governance process...the significant change here...we now have the department leadership at very senior levels...the CNO, Commandant, ASN levels...collaborating in the decision making process," the official said. "That's what these gate reviews are all about."
To date, the Navy has done 39 gate reviews, he added. But even with 39 reviews run through the new process, the jury is still out on whether the process has streamlined acquisition, the official said.
While it will take years to discern if the course corrections are effective, it certainly demonstrates Secretaries Gates and Winters are taking the problem seriously. Acquisition is not really my strong suit, but readers with a better handle on the process and problems are invited to weigh in.
[Update] After chewing on this for a while, it seems to me there is still one piece missing, and that's how this statement from Mr. Gates' recent policy paper gets integrated:
When it comes to procurement, for the better part of five decades, the trend has gone toward lower numbers as technology gains have made each system more capable. In recent years, these platforms have grown ever more baroque, have become ever more costly, are taking longer to build, and are being fielded in ever-dwindling quantities. Given that resources are not unlimited, the dynamic of exchanging numbers for capability is perhaps reaching a point of diminishing returns. A given ship or aircraft, no matter how capable or well equipped, can be in only one place at one time.
This is the keystone upon which the success or failure of the whole procurement strategy depends. Considering the attention procurement problems are attracting in the policy world, Congress and, increasingly, the media, it would be best to clearly iterate an overarching philosophy and make the distinctions between wants and needs in current and future programs obvious.
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