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Can the Pentagon Save Its Way to Better Management? : War on the Rocks , August 6 , 2019

August 6, 2019

War on the Rocks

From the document: “’We will reform the Department, beginning with the fourth estate,’ Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told Congress at his recent nomination hearing. ‘No reform is too small. In the Army, we found billions of dollars in savings by overturning hundreds of small stones that many said wouldn’t make a difference.’ The Department of Defense has been down this path before. The question is: what approach will it take this time? In March 2018, John Gibson, the Pentagon’s first full-time chief management officer, endorsed a Defense Business Board Study that suggested that the Department of Defense could save as much as $125 billion by becoming more efficient. Gibson established nine business reform teams that covered every aspect of defense management and support and boasted that ‘we actually added three areas’ to the lines of business suggested by the board. Two months later, Gibson committed to a lesser but still ambitious goal of achieving $46 billion in savings over a five-year period. By the end of the year, Gibson was out of office, apparently fired by the secretary of defense for ‘lack of performance.’”

Authors - Levine, Peter

Authors

Levine, Peter

Publishers

War on the Rocks

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