Last week, the Department of Defense took a big
step to streamline its notoriously burdensome procurement processes.
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and
Sustainment Ellen Lord issued DoD Instruction 5000.02, which made her new
Adaptive Acquisition Framework official policy.
The Adaptive Acquisition Framework essentially breaks
down the old, one-size-fits-all system of Defense Department procurement into
six separate pathways: urgent operational needs; middle-tier acquisition; major
capability acquisition; software; defense business systems; and services.
The different pathways reflect the variety of defense
contracts, which can range from last month’s record-breaking Virginia-class
submarine contract—which
will cost billions of dollars and will take years to complete—to contracts for
products needed immediately, such as the mine-resistant, ambush-protected
vehicles that had to be deployed in Iraq to protect soldiers from roadside
bombings. Production of MRAPs,
as they were called, surged from 82 vehicles a month in June 2007 to 1,300
vehicles a month by that December.
The list of Department of Defense contracts announced
just this Wednesday included contracts for new parts for Air Force F-16 fighter
jets; engineering and technical services for Navy communications systems, and
even chinstraps for Army advanced combat helmets.
These contracts for vastly different goods and
services, all operating on different timetables, used to be administered
according to a single cumbersome acquisition framework, one designed to prevent
program failures or over-budget projects. It involved a tedious series of
phases, milestones, and reviews as projects progressed from development to
production to operation.
This system worked well for long-term projects and
big-ticket items, such as a new class of submarines. But it didn’t make sense
for many contracts, especially those for services and software.
Now, contract administrators in the Department of
Defense can choose the best pathway for their procurement project, each with
rules and steps more adapted to the nature of the good or service being
procured.
The new software pathway is particularly important
to defense software solutions. Software is often developed cyclically: it is created,
then tested by users, whose feedback then is incorporated into a new version, which
itself is then tested by users. The traditional system didn’t accommodate this
process very well, but the new software procurement pathway has this cycle
built in.
When asked
the benefits of her proposal, Lord referred specifically to the huge progress
on software acquisition: “What we are enabling the industry base to do is
really use modern software practices with a contract vehicle that reflects that,
that doesn’t constrain them.”
The new Adaptive Acquisition Framework brings
better business practices into Department of Defense procurement, which can
only help the Pentagon’s relationship with industry. The change hopefully will bring
higher-quality goods and services to the department, faster and more
efficiently.
Whether the Adaptive Acquisition Framework speeds
things up will depend on the leaders who drive its execution. Either way, its
creation is a positive sign that the Pentagon finally wants to bring some
common sense into contracting.
Source material can be found at this site.
