Program Executive Officer (PEO) Concept: Is It Functioning as Intended

Abstract

In 1987 the Army implemented the Program Executive Officer Management concept. This new system was forced upon the Army and its sister services by the White House and Congress. It was their response to the American people's perception that acquisition in the services was too costly and not sufficiently managed to provide quality products for the troops. This PEO concept, now four years old, has totally changed the way the services oversee their acquisition programs. The implementation and subsequent transition to the PEO concept was not easy, as I will show by way of interviews with key acquisition personnel and historical information. Traditionally powerful people and organizations realized they were no longer going to control the acquisition process. Some affected players fought its implementation openly and others tacitly. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the Army's implementation of the PEO concept and to explain why and where it has not performed as intended so we can learn from this experience.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 28, 1991
Accession Number
ADA237620

Entities

People

  • Arthur S. Santo-donato

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Army Budgets
  • Army Procurement
  • Business Administration
  • Classification
  • Command And Control
  • Command And Control Systems
  • Contracts
  • Control Systems
  • Information Systems
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Acquisition
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Security
  • Test And Evaluation
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.