Critical Examination of the DOD's Business Management Modernization Program

摘要

In its efforts to improve operations in what it has designated the five 'business domains' in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) -- acquisition, financial management, human resources management, installations and environmental management, and logistics management -- the DoD's Business Management Modernization Program (BMMP) is a key element of the DoD's ongoing efforts to transform itself. This paper argues that the BMMP needs to be fundamentally reoriented to meet its goals. It provides an historical overview, research evidence from other studies, and additional arguments to support that view and suggests three steps that could be taken to begin the proposed reorientation. The BMMP is facing a very wide range of challenges. At the DoD level, the Department continues to grapple with accounting problems that almost defy belief. In May 2001, the Deputy Inspector General reported to Congress the existence of $1.1 trillion in unsupported adjustments to the DoD's FY 2000 books, out of $4.4 trillion in overall adjustments. This problem is so large that full audits by the DoD Inspector General have been discontinued until DoD management is able to report that the Department's books have become sufficiently reliable to justify the expense of another attempt at a full audit, which DoD management has not yet been able to do. At the service level, improvements in support-system performance promised when the Defense Business Operations Fund (DBOF) was established in 1991 have not materialized. At the working level, where hundreds of thousands of individual 'business' transactions occur daily in the DoD, the BMMP faces structural problems that demand new thinking. Finally, the demands of the DoD's contingency missions have only increased the need for the BMMP to succeed.