A former Pentagon acquisition official told Senate lawmakers on Tuesday that the Department of Defense (DoD) does not suffer from a lack of innovation, but rather a critical issue with its programming practices which hinders the agency’s ability to effectively deliver cutting-edge technologies to the military.
During a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, James Geurts, the former assistant secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, said that “the accumulation of decades of statutes, regulations, processes, all well-intentioned [have] permeated the bureaucracy [and] have hobbled our ability to adapt and change.”
Geurts highlighted that while the DoD workforce and military services understand the need for innovation, agility, and fiscal responsibility to meet evolving threats, the department’s real challenge is lies in the bureaucratic inefficiencies that obstruct progress.
“Risk-averse approaches have been impairing the nation’s competitive capability,” Geurts said, adding that many of the Pentagon’s roadblocks are “self-inflicted and culturally reinforced.”
To address those challenges, Geurts recommended empowering program managers. Currently, program managers answer to many stakeholders, and often requiring approval to make even small adjustments such as reallocating funds to higher-priority projects. Geurts argued that this system is too cumbersome and inhibits the department’s ability to act quickly and efficiently.
“This bureaucratic process slows down progress, especially when they need to adopt new technologies,” he said.
Geurts also emphasized the need to break down barriers between the department and its various partners in the defense industry.
“We need new entrants. We need commercial providers. We need program managers that have the authority to actually pick and then rapidly be able to choose the best performer,” Geurts said. “And then finally, we’ve got to break down the barrier that we’ve created between the person buying the equipment and the person using the equipment.”
Geurts emphasized that DoD is home to an incredibly talented workforce – military and civilian – but their potential is often limited because they are not fully informed about the market opportunities available to them.
“Harnessing our collective capabilities, talents, and innovations into a dynamic and aligned network will help overcome the limitations and linear thinking,” he said. “I believe we need to focus on building the future industrial network that we need that gives us the ability to scale and ability to be agile in this time of global competition.”