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Priority-Setting and Strategic Sourcing in the Naval Research, Development, and Technology Infrastructure

by Kenneth Saunders, Bruno Augenstein, Paul Bracken, Glenn Krumel, John Birkler, James Chiesa, Cullen M. Crain, R. Richard Heppe, Richard F. Hoglund, Brian Nichiporuk

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This report suggests ways in which the Dept. of the Navy might realize more value from its increasingly constrained research, development, and technology (RD&T) dollars. The study was motivated by the Navy's immediate policy needs in connection with the 1995 round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) and its longer-term need to make the best use of its resources. Suggestions are presented in three parts. First, the authors develop and apply a framework for setting funding priorities in the Naval RD&T infrastructure. Second, the authors discuss alternative RD&T procurement arrangements that are seeing increasing use in the private sector and that have been used in various parts of the government. These are commonly called "smart buying," but the authors use the term "strategic sourcing." Third, the authors present a speculative combination of the priority-setting and strategic-sourcing considerations of the first two parts. Using a reinterpretation of the orthogonal plot developed earlier in the report, it suggests a way to help determine which parts of the Naval RD&T infrastructure are best suited for alternative procurement arrangements. It also suggests a way to determine which facilities might be involved.

Table of Contents

  • Chapter One

    Introduction

  • Part I

    Setting Priorities

  • Chapter Two

    Assembling a List of Naval RD&T Capabilities

  • Chapter Three

    Criteria

  • Chapter Four

    Rankings and Support Priorities

  • Chapter Five

    Recapitulation and Concluding Observations for Part I

  • Part II

    Devising New Sourcing Strategies

  • Chapter Six

    General Considerations for Strategic Sourcing

  • Chapter Seven

    Private-Sector Case Studies

  • Chapter Eight

    Public-Sector Case Studies

  • Chapter Nine

    Efficiency Gains from Use of Civil-Sector Production

  • Chapter Ten

    Implementation Issues

  • Chapter Eleven

    Concluding Observations for Part II

  • Part III

    Combining Parts I and II and Drawing Inferences

  • Chapter Twelve

    Suitability of RD&T Lines for Outsourcing and Possible Implications of the Framework for the Naval RD&T Infrastructure

  • Appendix

  • Bibliography

    Bibliography 107

Research conducted by

The work was carried out in the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center of RAND's National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and the defense agencies. It was funded by the Deputy for Resources, Analysis and Policy (RA&P) in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. It was part of a larger effort funded by RA&P, which additionally covered the engineering, production, and support parts of the Navy's infrastructure, and in which a number of other research organizations took part.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation monograph report series. The monograph/report was a product of the RAND Corporation from 1993 to 2003. RAND monograph/reports presented major research findings that addressed the challenges facing the public and private sectors. They included executive summaries, technical documentation, and synthesis pieces.

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