Defense Acquisition Reform Panel

Chairman Rob Andrews

Hearing on The Department of Defense and Industry:

“Welcome to today’s hearing entitled “The Department of Defense and Industry: Does DOD Effectively Manage its Industrial Base and Match its Acquisition Strategies to the Marketplace?”  We are pleased to have a distinguished panel of witnesses with us today who represent a range of perspectives in the defense industry and on the contractor workforce.  I’ll introduce our witnesses individually a little bit later.

            “This panel has been engaged in systematically examining the defense acquisition system to try and identify the root causes of problems in the defense acquisition system.  Today we look at the question from industry’s perspective.  It is in industry, after all, where much of the Department’s critical work takes place and it is the contractor workforce performing these critical tasks. 

“When major problems on defense contracts occur, there is almost always significant joint responsibility for both the government and industry.  And it is worth bearing in mind that those parts of industry which are highly dependent on DOD business, and they are many, are hard pressed to tell their customer no when DOD gets something wrong.  Where does industry believe that shortfalls exist in DOD’s acquisition system and how does it affect the work that they do?  How does it affect the workers?

“This hearing continues a series of hearings the Panel has held in which we pose a hypothesis about a possible problem in the acquisition system and test it out against our witnesses. 

“Today we suggest that DOD suffers problems in its acquisition system because:

1) it often does a poor job communicating its true needs to industry (a problem largely driven by DOD’s difficulty in determining those needs in the requirements process);

2) acquisitions are often not structured in a way to obtain the best value from industry through rigorous and continuing competition; and

3) DOD has not succeeded in getting the significantly greater access to cutting edge commercial technology that was a major goal of the acquisition reforms of the 1990s. 

“We will also examine the effects of DOD’s approach toward its contractor workforce, which is largely an approach of ceding full control and authority over these issues to the management teams of its contractors.

            “I will proceed to introduce our witness individually, but before I do, let me recognize Mr.Conaway, for any opening remarks that he would like to make.”

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