The titled emailed came in this morning concluding the "five-bullet" What Did You Do Last Week exercise.

To wrap it up, the email asks us to submit for the last time through a provided survey link, "one idea that will improve the Department’s efficiency or root out waste. It can be big or small. It can be focused on a particular program or on larger Department operations."

I am curious to see what Wifcon community has to say about ONE idea that will improve efficiency and reduce waste at DoD.

1. Provide a one sentence description of what is wrong and what you recommend doing about it.

2. Please rate this problem on 1 - 7 scale.

   1. ~$100k or affects 1 person

   7. ~$10bn, or worthy of attention by the Secretary of Defense.
   

I know this essayist Raj Sharma from his contribution to the October 2012 volume of Contract Management magazine, in which he made a good case for Supply Chain Management replacing Contract Management in the case of commercial purchase orders and other low-complexity buys. CM magazine is behind a paywall, but I Googled him and found some of his work from that same timeframe. This report of his says the Federal Government can save between $25 billion and $54 billion a year by changing the way it buys goods and services, as follows:

• Estimate demand—know how much you need. So-called accurate-needs estimates help set budgets, predict required operational capacity, and provide suppliers accurate demand information that can improve government’s ability to negotiate better pricing.

• Plan better, use less—separate what you need from what you want. The easiest way to reduce costs is often simply to consume less. That starts by tying every purchase requirement to an identified need, not merely a desire.

• Buy commercial—buy what people are already selling. It’s almost always less expensive and less risky to buy an “off the shelf ” product than to commission a customized version. But it requires extensive research and discipline to stick to what the market offers.

• Source strategically—coordinate and consolidate your purchases. Instead of purchasing something whenever a need arises, “strategic sourcing” means coordinating across offices and taking a step back to determine the best way to purchase a good or service on an ongoing basis.

• Maximize competition—make it easy for vendors to save you money. Competition lowers costs, promotes innovation, and improves performance, so procurement officers should always strive to structure orders that attract multiple serious bidders.

• Negotiate intelligently—know everything about your bidders. Smart buyers understand every aspect of cost for a product or service and arrive at the negotiation table armed with extensive knowledge of the bidders.

• Simplify and automate—keep it simple, stupid. Procurement officials should eliminate bureaucratic hurdles that deter competition and they should automate processes wherever possible.

• Manage supplier relationships—get what you paid for. The buzz phrase “supplier relationship management” refers to a conscious effort at proactively managing supplier performance and relationships across an organization. This improves management of suppliers across multiple contracts and gives buyers better insight into vendor operations.

• Manage costs jointly—lower your supplier’s costs to lower your own. Working with suppliers to increase efficiencies and remove waste across the entire supply chain can ultimately reduce costs for government.

• Manage internal and contract compliance—show me the money. When agencies don’t ensure cost-saving strategies are being used and suppliers are complying with contract terms, predicted savings can “leak” out. Compliance management requires an unrelenting focus on implementation to ensure “identified” savings become “real.”

These are many one-sentence ideas, each totaling up to a 7 on your scale. Maybe you can submit them all one by one.

The report is within a link here, for your perusal: A $400 Billion Opportunity - Center for American Progress

From the October 2012 Contract Management magazine article, "9 Recommendations to Improve Federal Government Purchasing and Supply Chain Management":

"The U.S. federal government purchases more than $500 billion of goods and services each year, buying everything from pens and paper to engineering services and fighter jets. However, most experts agree that the government purchasing process is cumbersome and inefficient; hundreds of purchasing offices work independently with little or no coordination."

There's your problem statement. Then come Mr. Sharma's recommendations:

• Recommendation 1: Re-envision the role of government purchasing from managing purchases and price to managing supply chains and total cost

• Recommendation 2: Appoint a Chief Federal Supply Chain Officer to lead a new Office of Federal Supply Chain Managment

• Recommendation 3: Strengthen the role of departmental headquarters and redefine the role of departmental chief procurement officers

• Recommendation 4: Strengthen strategic sourcing and centralize management of common categories

• Recommendation 5: Establish supplier performance and relationship management programs

• Recommendation 6: Implement TechStat-style reviews of Major Acquisition Programs

• Recommendation 7: Restructure the workforce and transform the culture

• Recommendation 8: Streamline the FAR and procurement process

• Recommendation 9: Leverage technology to improve transparency, maximize competition, and drive down cost

Go read the article if you have a copy.

Much of the commercial products and services we buy could use these attributes of commoditizing Supply Chain Management, as compared to labor-intensive Contract Management. If you have any experience working with a prime contractor that has many aircraft engine part suppliers, you may recognize that adoption of this would be alignment to industry best practices. You know those practices must be good because those engine manufacturers’ revenues are mostly fixed-price commercial, and so they have all the risk - therefore they do things efficiently.

And if you have any experience working at DCMA you know the government's labor-intensive, PO-by-PO contract management is not efficient. That's because government has all the risk but just increases the budget when it realizes risk.

Edited June 1Jun 1 by WifWaf
Corrected per below

I imagine the question was posed across the board. Specific to acquisition....

11 hours ago, KOiFish said:

Provide a one sentence description of what is wrong and what you recommend doing about it.

The Federal government does a poor job of utilizing surplus property as part of their supply chain management.

Please rate this problem on 1 - 7 scale.

5

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104626

@KOiFish What is your idea?

On 5/23/2025 at 11:59 AM, WifWaf said:

If you have any experience working with a prime contractor that has many aircraft engine part suppliers, you may recognize that adoption of this would be alignment to industry best practices. You know those practices must be good because those engine manufacturers are mostly fixed-price and so have all the risk - therefore they do things efficiently.

I love that one. Reminds me of the $1000 bolts, $650 toilet seats Hundred dollar hammers, etc. when sourcing all parts through the prime aircraft manufacturer.

42 minutes ago, joel hoffman said:

I love that one. Reminds me of the $1000 bolts, $650 toilet seats Hundred dollar hammers, etc. when sourcing all parts through the prime aircraft manufacturer.

I meant they are fixed-price commercial. Edited it above. Thanks, Joel.

Are you recalling a time when the engines were government-developed?

1 hour ago, WifWaf said:

I meant they are fixed-price commercial. Edited it above. Thanks, Joel.

Are you recalling a time when the engines were government-developed?

I’m referring to sourcing parts to repair government owned aircraft through the aircraft maker rather from the parts manufacturers.

Speaking of commercial practices I recently tried to find the part number for a 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee transmission control module for my friend’s widow living in Namibia. She also has a 2014 GC.

The service rep at a local Jeep dealer here in AL told me that Jeep only supports spare parts for Jeeps for ten model years. He couldn’t find part numbers for either of her model year Jeeps even the US models.

I said that sounded stupid. He agreed but indicated that it isn’t just Jeep.

Part of the problem is that Jeep/Chrysler has gone through several owner changes since the 1980’s. But he claimed that other domestic auto manufacturers are going the same way.

To complicate the problem, my friend’s Jeeps were produced in Austria by a plant under contract to Daimler Benz. He said they have transmissions made by Mercedes or other European or Asian suppliers but couldn’t find that information. They weren’t importing transmissions from the US suppliers.

The local service rep tried unsuccessfully to find the VIN numbers for her Jeeps in their Jeep system and on the Internet.

I had found secondary sources for domestic Jeep tranny control modules on the internet but they were for US made Jeeps without the parts numbers. They were running between $100-$200. I suppose that I could have contacted those sources for part numbers.

I did learn that the control module is inside the transmission, requiring removal and tear down. So we wouldn’t be able to know the part number without a tranny removal and tear down.

She lives on a farm that is 150 kilometers from the nearest transmission/Jeep firms. The Jeep will only run in first and second gear at about 20KPH. She said it would be a ten hour drive.

She is a widow and can’t afford a tow thst far. I told her that a $2800 tranny repair on her low mileage Jeep would be better than having to buy a newer vehicle.

So, it isn’t wise in my opinion to simply make general assumptions that commercial practices by original manufacterers are “efficient” or are “best practices”.

Researching to source a new control module and determine what would be required took me about 8 hours on the Internet and visiting-consulting with my favorite tranny shop and the local Jeep dealer. Efficient Commercial practices. Hmm.

These are not serious people.

"Describe an incredibly complex problem in one sentence."

Folks, if you can’t describe a problem briefly, then you haven’t critically thought it through yet.

Folks, if you think anything anyone is suggesting is going to happen, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya.

Problem: The proliferation of "review boards" at DCMA that review many decisions made by warranted contracting officers has created another bureaucracy within the bureaucracy. As a result, decisions take months longer to implement than should be the case.

Scale: 5 of 7

Proposed Solution: Eliminate all review boards at DCMA. Instead, give warranted contracting officers authority inherent in their position to make business decisions on behalf of DoD. Hold them accountable as individuals for the quality of their decisions.

Signed "Still Waiting for My FPRA to Be Approved by a Review Board Six Months After Submittal, Two Months After DCAA Audit, and Six Weeks After Handshake"

On 6/4/2025 at 10:16 AM, here_2_help said:

Proposed Solution: Eliminate all review boards at DCMA. Instead, give warranted contracting officers authority inherent in their position to make business decisions on behalf of DoD. Hold them accountable as individuals for the quality of their decisions.

Signed "Still Waiting for My FPRA to Be Approved by a Review Board Six Months After Submittal, Two Months After DCAA Audit, and Six Weeks After Handshake"

There was a COFC case involving CAS that led to review boards being instituted. It was rightly needed, given the current state of professional development and the facts I recall of the blatantly poor decision the ACO made. It didn’t involve any forward pricing, though, from what I recall.

The broader problem statement here is in this: Experience tells us almost every government project that gives people power, like a review board, will expand beyond its original basis for establishment. So…

1. Provide what you recommend doing about it.

2. Please rate this problem on 1 - 7 scale.

How did the checks and balances written into the Constitution solve this kind of problem efficiently?

On 6/3/2025 at 10:08 PM, Self Employed said:

Folks, if you think anything anyone is suggesting is going to happen, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya.

If you think this matters to the discussion, then you’d best stay out of it, and let the adults talk.

I’m sorry, but I’m just so tired of childishness in media - it seems like all of social media and all the news outlets are written by emotionally unhealthy, immature kids. All the stateliest journalists of the past have been out-clicked because they’re competing with knee jerk comments like the one quoted above. As a result, critical thinking can’t thrive anywhere on the internet, except on small unknown websites like this one - if, that is, we hold each other accountable.

3 hours ago, WifWaf said:

There was a COFC case involving CAS that led to review boards being instituted. It was rightly needed, given the current state of professional development and the facts I recall of the blatantly poor decision the ACO made. It didn’t involve any forward pricing, though, from what I recall.

The broader problem statement here is in this: Experience tells us almost every government project that gives people power, like a review board, will expand beyond its original basis for establishment. So…

1. Provide what you recommend doing about it.

2. Please rate this problem on 1 - 7 scale.

How did the checks and balances written into the Constitution solve this kind of problem efficiently?

I beg to differ. I assert there was no "smoking gun" COFC CAS case. Review boards were instituted to: (a) ensure "consistency" in KO decisions across the agency; and (b) provide coverage to KOs from adverse IG and GAO reports. Properly trained KOs who perform their job well and document their decisions do not need review boards. In fact, KOs spent far too many hours preparing their review packages for those boards. Pre-negotiation reviews. Post-negotiation reviews. An utter waste of everybody's time.

5 hours ago, WifWaf said:

If you think this matters to the discussion, then you’d best stay out of it, and let the adults talk.

I agree. I also have no brain.

2 hours ago, here_2_help said:

Properly trained KOs who perform their job well and document their decisions do not need review boards. In fact, KOs spent far too many hours preparing their review packages for those boards. Pre-negotiation reviews. Post-negotiation reviews. An utter waste of everybody's time.

That’s because this type of thing is just a bolt-on requirement. Regardless of how, I think we can agree review boards began recently, in response to bad decision(s). A check and balance, rather, would have been designed into the system.

Like the Executive Branch’s veto power over Congress, a good check and balance pits competing powers against each other for the betterment of the decision. Veto is efficient, too - there’s no chain of command involved.

The one place the FAR does a good job of this is the competition advocate role in Part 6. The statute designed parties with competing interests. You work hard for your interests to win over the other party’s interests, just like an attorney would in a court case. You’re not beholden to the competition advocate, you’re beholden to sound reasoning. That’s what a good reformation appealing to “common sense” should accomplish.

OSDBU’s influence on the market research decision is another example of this, albeit not for a unanimously noble cause (socioeconomic concerns).