'Why Hasn't Anything Changed?': Suhas Subramanyam Asks Witness About DoD Procurement System

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At a House Oversight Committee Hearing in June, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) asked Director of Contracting and National Security Acquisitions Shelby Oakley about new methods of selecting government contractors.

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00:00Back, and now I recognize the ranking member, Mr. Subramaniam, for five minutes.

00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:08It's a very good conversation.

00:11I guess, Ms. Oakley, your report came out today,

00:17and I'm very interested in some of the findings here,

00:21especially this iterative development approach

00:23and trying to reform how we procure things at DOD.

00:27I guess I'm going to try to summarize kind of what's been said,

00:32which is right now the DOD has a lot of money,

00:35but it spends that money in a way that's not very agile.

00:39It sometimes buys technologies or products that are,

00:43but the acquisition process takes so long that by the time they receive that product,

00:48it may be obsolete because of how fast things are changing.

00:52In other cases, as Mr. Snellgrove mentioned,

00:54small businesses really don't want to work with the DOD

00:58or have trouble working with the DOD

01:00because the process is so cumbersome.

01:03Ms. Bodner mentioned some of that as well.

01:05And so you're not getting the best and brightest in our country

01:08working with the DOD, trying to help them innovate.

01:12There's some exceptions to this that I want to point out,

01:14like the Defense Innovation Unit.

01:16But that's a workaround, as Ms. Oakley mentioned.

01:18That's not necessarily the norm at the DOD.

01:21And then Mr. Schwartz mentioned that a lot of these procurement officers

01:26are not experienced in what they do

01:28and that a lot of times they're just sort of sometimes literally helicoptered in

01:33thinking they're going to be doing something else

01:35and then they end up being the acquisition person.

01:37And then they leave and do something else

01:39and a new acquisition person comes in too.

01:41And in the meantime, a lot of the IT and tech people,

01:45we seem to be losing them.

01:46And so I think that's sort of the summary in my head of what's going on here.

01:50But this certainly can't be – I'm new here, so this is my first term.

01:54This certainly can't be the first time we've had this conversation.

01:57And so, Ms. Oakley, I would just ask, you know, why hasn't anything changed?

02:02And this can't be the first time we've had this conversation, right?

02:05Why has change been so slow with the DOD?

02:10I think that change has been slow for a number of reasons.

02:13I think oftentimes the changes are focused on things around the margins, right?

02:18Trying to change a specific process or a specific policy to get at a particular issue.

02:24But what our work would advocate for is a wholesale new approach to acquisition

02:29that would address a number of the issues that we're talking about here.

02:33Having an iterative development approach opens you up to businesses

02:38that you would never be able to work with before

02:40because they don't want to work in DOD's long, linear acquisition processes

02:45with all the bureaucratic hurdles that they have to go over.

02:49But an iterative development process opens them up to a new world.

02:53I think the other thing that's important to note is that the prior long, linear acquisitions

02:59that we've had in the past have maybe been okay for the threats

03:03that we've faced over the past several decades.

03:06That's different now.

03:07We're in a new world where technology is evolving very quickly

03:11and the threat is changing and we're facing peer competitors.

03:15Those are all, that's all a new world.

03:18And that requires-

03:18Are those new problems though?

03:20New problems, yeah.

03:21I mean-

03:21The past 10 years, you would say?

03:23Yeah, I would say it's new problems and new opportunities, right?

03:25The pace of technological change is stunning right now

03:29and being able to seize on those opportunities

03:31is something that DOD needs to be able to take very seriously.

03:35How much money, this is for anyone,

03:38how much money do you think we could save by fixing DOD procurement?

03:42Like ballpark, you would say.

03:45I think you could save hundreds of billions of dollars.

03:49I mean, just our work on weapons systems alone

03:51where we point out cost and schedule overruns for these programs

03:55every year in our annual weapons assessment

03:57would really point to the fact that if we got more efficient

04:02and effective at providing capabilities to our warfighter,

04:05we would save a significant amount of money

04:08and avoid a lot of the waste in the system that we have right now.

04:11And I would say three points about that question.

04:14The first one is I would say we can at least save 10%

04:16if you want to talk actual dollars, right?

04:19But I want to make two other points.

04:21We would get things faster.

04:22We'd get them into the field faster.

04:24That sometimes is more important than some of the cost savings.

04:28And two is we would get better capabilities at the same time.

04:32There are companies, I know companies,

04:33that will not offer their front-top technologies

04:37to the Department of Defense.

04:39They'll sell them the second- or third-generation technologies,

04:41but not the first.

04:43So we're talking about three things.

04:44We're talking about cost savings, and it could be significant.

04:47We're talking about how fast we get these capabilities

04:49into the hands of the people that need it.

04:51And it's just not warfighters.

04:52It's the logistics systems like we talk about

04:54so the right things get to the right places

04:56so we can fix things.

04:57So just summarize, because I'm running out of time.

04:59Sorry.

05:00So by doing DoD procurement reform,

05:02we would save hundreds of billions of dollars at least.

05:05I think it's actually more.

05:06We would get things faster,

05:07and we'd get better technology.

05:09I think this should be one of Congress's top priorities

05:11when it comes to budgeting.

05:12I yield back.

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