An Analysis of Major Acquisition Reforms Through Text Mining and Grounded Theory Design

Abstract

Cost growth is an established phenomenon within Defense Acquisition that the US Government has attempted to abolish for decades through seemingly endless cycles of reform. Dozens of experts and senior leaders within the acquisition community have published their notions on the reasons for cost growth, nevertheless, legislation has yet to eradicate this presumed conundrum. For this reason, this research is aimed at identifying existing trends within past major Defense Acquisition Reform legislation, as well as in a compendium of views from leaders within the Defense Acquisition community on the efficacy of acquisition reform, to determine the possible disconnect. To accomplish this goal, this research takes a qualitative approach, utilizing various Text Mining methodologies, along with Grounded Theory Design, to analyze the major reforms and expert views. The results of this research corroborate the current literatures claim that past Defense Acquisition reforms have not been able to sufficiently address the root causes of cost growth, and identifies six potential root causes of cost growth.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 23, 2018
Accession Number
AD1056519

Entities

People

  • Amanda L Mcgowin

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Business Administration
  • Computer Programming
  • Contracts
  • Cost Analysis
  • Data Mining
  • Data Science
  • Department Of Defense
  • Governments
  • Information Science
  • Information Systems
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Acquisition
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Systems Engineering
  • Test And Evaluation

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Oncology
  • Theoretical Analysis.