Acquisition Reform in the United States - Research Paper Example

Acquisition Reform Acquisition Reform The Defense department is one of the major sectors in the United States. It is one of the largest consumers of the US budget. On the other hand, the economic aspects of the US depend on the defense actions of the country. The nation’s defense power is directly proportional to the economic performance of a nation. Now, it is evident that there exists mutual dependency between the US military and the economic performance of this country (Dirk, 1994 p. 89). In this context, it becomes logical to evaluate the eminent relationship between them. Therefore, the defense department depends so much on the economic sector of the American population. The military’s economic dependency is depicted in the budget allocation and on other aspects like military logistical acquisition. Based on these facts, the US government has seen the need to blend these two sectors together to harmonize their dependency on each other. This led to the formulation of the acquisition reform program (Hanks, 2005, p.234). Acquisition reform is an exercise meant to integrate the United States military with the civil business practices. The US department of defense acknowledged the need to integrate the civil industrial sector with the military. The economical production of the US had direct relations with the military in terms of logistics production and supply. From the late 1980’s through 1990’s to the present times, the US department of defense has undertaken numerous exercises meant to develop an optimal program to integrate these two sectors. The goals of the reform exercise are aimed at streamlining the performance of the US military by initiating close relationship between the civil logistics producers and the defense department. This exercise has presented numerous challenges to the main corridors of US power, especially the Pentagon, on how to carry out the optimal reform actions effectively. This led to the enactment of the Acquisition reform Act in 2009 by the US congress. The need to integrate the Defense department with the business sector arose after a consideration of how to respond effectively to the US military requirements. This underlying principle led to the initiation of objective research meant to formulate the projects deliverables. These deliverables were to provide an insight into the objective purpose of the acquisition reform process. The main objective of the reform exercise is for the civil economic sector to respond efficiently to the military needs. Based on this goal, the project designers saw the need of integrating the national industrial base into the military systems (Lorrel & Graser, 2005 p. 70). In this case, the Department of Defense considered adopting the ideal customer processes in their relationship with the US industrial sector. Since the program’s inception, the numerous modifications are aimed at focusing on the long-term emphasis of the business problems and solutions of the military. Some of the projected deliverables is meant to encourage commercial industries to work with the defense sector. Based on this underlying objective, every acquisition reform process is aimed at considering the policies, behavioral or cultural changes and the business values that will facilitate the achievement of the reform goals (Dirk, 1994 p. 38). Now, it is clearly understood that the main aim of the acquisition reform program is to address the issue of commercial relations between the military and the industrial sector in terms of logistical supplies and service provision. Before this program, there was an inherent problem in the military concerning the economical processes of acquisition and usage of military equipments and services. The producers of these equipments and providers of the services were the major stakeholders in the US civil industrial sector. Therefore, the masterminds of this program aimed at articulating the procurement practices of the defense department by blending the concepts of commerce and the consumer requirements. The Defense department wanted to respond to the military requirements in an efficient and timely manner. These included providing the military fighters with the most efficient tools in a responsive manner, without experiencing any commercial technical strains during the procurement process. The main areas of concerns lied in the aspects of ordering for the requisite materials, procuring the materials, and managing them. Procurement of materials and services entails the process of contracting the jobs and auditing the commercial prospects of the exercise. All these are meant overlook into the management, cost of an acquisition exercise and the effective and responsive delivery of the optimal requirements (Dirk, 1994 p. 45). Acquisition of equipment entails a lot of bureaucracy. This calls for the formulation of a management team meant to implement and oversee the exercise. The management’s duties would range from contract formation, office documentation, and auditing the financial documents resulting from the exercise. The process of acquiring materials starts with the selection of the best candidate to produce the materials. Since the players in the military equipment production industry increases every time, the best candidate should be awarded with the chance to produce the goods. In this regard, acquisition reforms are aimed at evaluating the procurement procedures and regulations plus all the practices surrounding the process of contracting. This involves the revision of the existing contract administration procedures and principles. The department of defense is considering introducing the aspect of risk management rather than risk avoidance in their procurement management exercises. These acquisition management decisions, are made by the Defense Contract Management Command, the Defense Audit Command and the Defense Finance, and Accounting Service (Dirk, 1994 p. 76). The other main sector in the acquisition process concerns the production of the required materials. The first step taken to improve the aspect of material production was to encourage the integration of the civil industries and the military. This resulted in many investors venturing into the industrial segment of military equipment production. Therefore, the production of military logistics is carried out by independent civil industries. This presents the ideal business platform whereby the producers are independent from the product consumers. In this context, the defense department had to come up with mechanisms meant to address the issue of consumers’ requirements and the producers’ business practices. This meant harmonizing the principles of military practices and those of the producers’ business practices in formulating guidelines governing the specification of the materials and services required (Hanks, 2005 p.45). The main unconformity between the producers and consumers was on the issue of specification standards of the logistics. This involved the aspect of military standard and the production standards practiced by the manufacturing industries. The producing industries have to employ the technical knowledge on developing the optimal conditions of producing materials in an economical manner. On the other hand, the military requires materials that meet certain functional or structural standards as per their operation principles. Now, the industries and the military had to harmonize the specification standard to address each party’s needs satisfactorily. The harmonization of the standards has led to the adoption of nongovernmental specifications in the production of military equipment (Lorrel & Graser, 2005 p.76). In addition, the third component in reforming the acquisition process is with regard to the procurement cost accounting. During the earlier days of military operations, the main problem of a military exercise concerned the cost of starting, developing, and sustaining an acquisition process. This proved to be the major economic strain to the US defense department. At these moments, the defense used to regard the aspect of cost as a dependent variable to a military operation exercise. The military would design an exercise concerning an acquisition process first, before even considering the cost factor. They would then relate the cost with the performance level that the exercise should meet. In case of a more straining cost, they would adjust the performance level to correspond with the available financial resources (Hanks, 2005, p.78). In the present moment, the acquisition process has evolved since its inception stage, and numerous modifications have been carried out to harmonize the economic aspect of cost and the acquisition of the optimal logistical requirements. One-step taken to address the issue of cost in military exercises is the integration of the producers and the consumers, who are the US industrial sector and the US military respectively. The result of this was the separation of cost from the designing of the acquisition exercise. Currently, cost is handled as an independent variable in any US military acquisition program. This led to the creation of a costing team in modern acquisition procedures. The costing committee is meant to identify opportunities that will give substantial savings from procurement exercises. This involves the considerations of all the available acquisition options and the available cost-performance tradeoffs (Lorrel & Graser, 2005, p. 27). It is important to note that, the US defense acquisition reform exercise has undergone evolution since its inception. The major areas undergoing reforms in the US acquisition processes are the management, production of optimal goods and costing. Numerous modifications of these processes have been implemented through the years, in an effort to achieve the optimum acquisition performance. Although the Defense Department has made many successful and effective decisions concerning military material acquisition, it is still trying to streamline the exercise procedures as per the military personnel wishes (Hanks, 2005 p.34). References Hanks, C. (2005). Re-examining military acquisition reform: are we there yet? New York: Rand Corporation. Lorell, M., & Graser, J. (2005). Price-based acquisition: issues and challenges for Defense Department procurement of weapon systems. New York. Rand Corporation. Dirk, M. (1994). Acquisition Reform: Regulatory Implementation of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994. DIANE Publishing. Read More