Continuous Improvement Central to Better Buying Power 3.0

By Claudette Roulo

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2014 - The undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics released a draft of the third iteration of the Pentagon's Better Buying Power initiative today, noting that it emphasizes innovation and technical excellence while remaining focused on continual improvement.

The final version is expected to be released in January, Frank Kendall said during a presentation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

At their hearts, each Better Buying Power version has been based on the principle of evolutionary change, he said. "It isn't about throwing out one set of ideas and completely replacing them with another set," the undersecretary noted.

The evolution of BBP

Better Buying Power 1.0 emphasized specific best practices. BBP 2.0 built on those practices to emphasize the development of critical thinking skills and better decision-making tools.

And BBP 3.0 continues the focus on continuous improvement, Kendall said, through a new emphasis on initiatives that encourage innovation and promote technical excellence. "There's an enormous amount of continuity between 2.0 and 3.0," he noted.

This version of BBP renews the focus on the capabilities the department provides to troops, the undersecretary said. "Our technical superiority is at risk," Kendall said. "It is eroding, because we're not making the investments we should be making." Sequestration is posing significant problems for the department in terms of maintaining technical superiority, he added.

BBP 3.0 is aimed at strengthening the professionalism of the acquisitions corps and developing better relationships with industry through incentives and removal of barriers and red tape to ensure the department can achieve dominance while still controlling lifecycle costs, the undersecretary said.

Eight focus areas

The new BBP will have eight focus areas:

-- Achieve affordable programs;

-- Achieve dominant capabilities while controlling lifecycle costs;

-- Incentivize productivity in industry and government;

-- Incentivize innovation in industry and government;

-- Eliminate unproductive processes and bureaucracy;

-- Promote effective competition;

-- Improve tradecraft in acquisition of services; and

-- Improve the professionalism of the total acquisition workforce.

Some of these focus areas carried over from BBP 2.0, Kendall said, because they are central to what the department is trying to achieve and are likely to be in any version of Better Buying Power.

A narrower focus

While some of the larger objectives remained the same, their focus has narrowed, Kendall explained. In addition, the circle of stakeholders has expanded. For example, he said, it's no longer sufficient just to control lifecycle costs, as was the case under BBP 2.0. Now, acquisitions professionals are asked to ensure their programs will build dominant capabilities. To do so, it is necessary to build the relationship among the acquisitions, requirements and intelligence communities, the undersecretary said.

As adversaries have become more technically adept and new threats emerge, the acquisitions community has to be prepared to adjust as it plans new programs, Kendall said.

"The idea is to get to the next generation of those things, find out what they are, do it in a coherent way, and then focus our resources on programs that are going to change the game," he said. "If we don't do that, the concern I have about technology priorities is going to become even greater."

Industry incentives

Getting to the next generation of development requires research, and one way Kendall said the department will seek to spur research is through incentive programs. The Superior Supplier Incentive Program will expand across all the military services, he said. The Navy ran a pilot program that already has shown results, the undersecretary said.

"The Navy published its list. I had a CEO come in to me and say that because [his company] was in the bottom third of the three segments, he had to go explain to his board why," Kendall said.

"I thought, 'This is terrific. This is exactly what I want to see because of this,'" he added.

Another way of encouraging research is through the removal of barriers to the Defense Department's use of commercial technologies, the undersecretary said. "We want to find a way to bring innovators who are in the commercial world [and] give them a reason to be involved with the government and do business with the government," he said.

In the end, Kendall said, BBP 3.0 attempts to balance two competing goals: affordability and technological development. "We have no choice," he added. "We can't be complacent and sit and wait. We have to have decisions about how to use our resources in some way to stay ahead of the other guys."