A Critical Examination of the DOD's Business Management Modernization Program

Abstract

In its efforts to improve operations in what it has designated the five "business domains" in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) -- acquisition, financial management, human resources management, installations and environmental management, and logistics management -- the DoD's Business Management Modernization Program (BMMP) is a key element of the DoD's ongoing efforts to transform itself. This paper argues that the BMMP needs to be fundamentally reoriented to meet its goals. It provides an historical overview, research evidence from other studies, and additional arguments to support that view and suggests three steps that could be taken to begin the proposed reorientation. The BMMP is facing a very wide range of challenges. At the DoD level, the Department continues to grapple with accounting problems that almost defy belief. In May 2001, the Deputy Inspector General reported to Congress the existence of $1.1 trillion in unsupported adjustments to the DoD's FY 2000 books, out of $4.4 trillion in overall adjustments. This problem is so large that full audits by the DoD Inspector General have been discontinued until DoD management is able to report that the Department's books have become sufficiently reliable to justify the expense of another attempt at a full audit, which DoD management has not yet been able to do. At the service level, improvements in support-system performance promised when the Defense Business Operations Fund (DBOF) was established in 1991 have not materialized. At the working level, where hundreds of thousands of individual "business" transactions occur daily in the DoD, the BMMP faces structural problems that demand new thinking. Finally, the demands of the DoD's contingency missions have only increased the need for the BMMP to succeed.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA498927

Entities

People

  • Christopher Hanks

Organizations

  • University of Georgia

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Business Administration
  • Commerce
  • Financial Management
  • Governments
  • Information Systems
  • Law
  • Logistics
  • Logistics Management
  • Management Personnel
  • Money
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Public Policy
  • Supply Chain
  • Test And Evaluation
  • United States

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Defense Financial Management and Audit.
  • Economics