Deputy defense secretary wary of fixes to Pentagon management

Oh, my! Dems trying to fix Pentagon management? This could be good, but it's so hidden, who'd know?

http://thehill.com/business--lobby/deputy-defense-secretary-wary-of-fixes-to-pentagon-management-2007-06-27.html

Deputy defense secretary wary of fixes to Pentagon management
By Roxana Tiron
June 27, 2007

Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England is rejecting congressional directives to alter Pentagon management, arguing that legislative fixes in the 2008 House and Senate defense authorization bills could be an additional bureaucratic burden on the Department of Defense (DoD).

Both House and Senate defense authorizers took steps to spur change in the Pentagon’s business processes, but the two chambers will have to iron out some differences when the two defense authorization bills get to conference.

Currently, the House bill gives the secretary of defense more flexibility in structuring the management team than the Senate legislation does.

The House and Senate bills call for the creation of a Pentagon chief management officer. The Senate version also calls for the establishment of a full-time undersecretary of defense to ensure management problems identified by the comptroller general receive continuous attention. Despite Pentagon objections, Senate authorizers defined management responsibilities rather than leaving that up to the Pentagon.

England said the Pentagon leadership prefers the House’s bill to the Senate’s, but stressed that neither “is needed in the department.” England said one of his initiatives upon becoming second civilian-in-command at the Pentagon was to reduce “our own directives to shrink the bureaucracy as much as possible.”

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Government at all levels is hobbled in its effectiveness by a lot of strictures, and what is being proposed is more bureaucracy. This leads to a culture of "if it follows the letter of the law its okay" and stifles any innovation and attempts to be more nimble. Worse yet, it allows the Darlene Duryens of the world to get away with what she did since "the system said its okay".

Its time to stop treating rank and file govies like crooks and instead build a culture that encourages inovation and open comms.

the problems "identified by the comptroller general, establishing a position responsible for actually managing the problems is NOT treating the rank and file like crooks but, instead, trying to address problems so that the rank and file don't LOOK like crooks.