Watchdog: Pentagon Should Integrate Military Services' Efforts at 'Better Buying Power'

After five years and several iterations of the Better Buying Power efficiency initiative, the Defense Department still is not effectively using portfolio management to optimize $1.4 trillion in weapon system investments, the Government Accountability Office has concluded.

In areas such as shipbuilding, programs are too often duplicative while affordability studies get ignored due to fragmented governance, unsustained leadership and “perceived lack of decision-making authority,” auditors wrote in a new report.

“Best practices recommend assessing investments collectively from an enterprise-wide perspective and integrating requirements, acquisition, and budget information, but several factors inhibit DoD's ability to do so,” GAO said.

While the department operates as a joint force on the battlefield, it “still does not use an integrated approach to optimizing its weapon system investments,” said the report to Congress’ Armed Services and Defense Appropriations panels. “The military services develop investment plans that reflect their own priorities.”

The Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics requires the military services and other Defense components to conduct portfolio-based affordability analyses under Better Buying Power and in its acquisition instruction, GAO noted. “However, AT&L has not reviewed the quality of the analyses or used them to inform acquisition decisions,” GAO said. “We also found that these efforts are only partially being implemented.” Nor has the AT&L office monitored the service’s efforts.

To better integrate the services’ buying efforts to curb duplication and cut costs, GAO recommended that Defense officials update the department’s portfolio management policy; designate a senior official for its implementation; conduct annual portfolio reviews that integrate key information from the requirements, acquisition, and budget processes; and invest in analytical tools to support portfolio management efforts.

The Pentagon only partially concurred. A letter transmitted by Jacqueline Van Ovost, vice director of the Joint Staff, said “some aspects of the recommendation are redundant to, and will serve to conflict with, other processes and activities in place to perform robust portfolio management both from a day-to-day management and annual review perspective.” In addition, DoD wrote, “Requiring additional enterprise-level portfolio reviews would be redundant to annual reviews already conducted through existing departmental processes that adjust to meet changing threat, technologies, fiscal realities and legislative direction.”