Pentagon Wish List
I saw this article in Bloomberg News on the Pentagon Wish List this morning. In my days in the Pentagon we always had an unfunded list to share with the Hill. Inevitably, the day after the President’s Budget was submitted the Hill was asking for the list. Back then we didn’t share with OSD. It was all part of the strategy. There was the regular budget submission (those things that everyone wanted), the Gold Watch list (things we left out but were sure to be included in law because of Hill support) and the Unfunded list (those things we really wanted but OSD didn’t...
Read MorePentagon Investigates Abusive Leaders
Big blurb in the Post this morning, but I’m not sure it’s “news.” Some of our most legendary leaders could probably be characterized as “abusive”, but generally (pardon the pun!) they were abusive to knuckleheads and fiercely loyal to those who did their jobs. We can all name a few folks who seemed to have forgotten that they were promoted to senior ranks not by the sheer force of their personality, but by the deeds and actions of those who worked for them. When that happens the system almost always gets it right and fixes the problem. Usually the...
Read MoreGovernment Transformation Initiative
Here’s a statistic I read in Federal Computer Week that will open your eyes: “Last year, the GAO documented close to $10 billion in failed IT projects and continues to identify hundreds of millions of dollars in duplicative and ineffective IT systems.” The problem is although we have plenty of watchdog organizations to discover these sorts of facts, agencies seem to be powerless to fix them. The Government Transformation Initiative is designed to provide the President and Congress with specific courses of action to fix the problems uncovered by our various watchdog...
Read More