Pentagon plan to streamline business
could save as much as $250 million
By Lisa Burgess,
Washington bureau
ARLINGTON, Va. — The Pentagon’s newest plan to streamline its business
practices could save as much as $250 million, and that’s just for starters, project
leaders said Wednesday.
Navy Vice Adm. Joe Dyer, chairman of the Business Initiatives Council (BIC), unveiled a
"quick-hit" set of 11 initiatives he said will make it easier for the Pentagon
to hire the people it needs, keep its own books, and purchase much-needed items for war
fighters — all while saving "up to a quarter of a billion dollars."
The BIC is a pet project of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the three service
secretaries — businessmen all.
The program, announced in early July, is headed by Edward "Pete" Aldridge,
undersecretary for Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.
The BIC ties the services together, making them responsible for devising ways to make
the military more efficient.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also participates
in the committee as "the voice of the war fighter," Dyer said.
Dyer said commitment from the Pentagon’s top echelons gives the program a chance
to succeed where uncountable efforts over the years have failed.
"We know we have the support of senior leadership, which really means a lot …
to those of us who are putting our heart and soul into" the program, Dyer said.
The committee met Sept. 14 to approve 11 ideas that members believe can be put into
place fast enough to affect the fiscal 2003 budget.
"Speed is a laser focus with this group," Dyer said.
One of the most important changes the committee hopes to make is to allow departments
and programs that can identify areas where money can be saved to actually reap the
benefits, Dyer said.
"We have long recognized the motivational dampening of good works generating no
reward," Dyer said. "We have to be respectful of the motivational power of
people seeing the fruits of their own labor."
Among the initiatives are plans that the DOD can put in place itself, such as the
scheme to modify the 180-day waiting period to hire retired military — "your
patience for hearing from us probably isn’t that great," Dyer said — and a
plan to pool the Defense Department’s purchase of software, which is now the
responsibility of individual services.
Other ideas will require cooperation from Congress, in particular the committee’s
hope to raise money limits that make it difficult for services to shift funds from one
part of a project to another without Congressional permission.
Today, Congress has to approve any purchasing shift of more than $10 million to another
account; the BIC group wants that doubled.
The committee also plans to ask Congress to raise the research and development
threshold from $4 million to $10 million, Dyer said.
The threshold change does not require legislation, but all four Congressional military
oversight committees must agree to it, Dyer said.
The 11 initiatives are just the beginning, however.
"These are the low-hanging fruit," Dyer said. "The initial phase is to
establish momentum and generate some excitement; few things succeed like success."
With the first block of initiatives on the table, the group is actively soliciting
ideas from the Pentagon’s work force.
"There is no shortage of good ideas, but we’ve got to get some traction"
by showing that the program can and does work, Dyer said.
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