Improving Acquisition Outcomes

Organizational and Management Issues

Irv Blickstein, Charles Nemfakos

Expert InsightsPublished 2009

Many of the problems that contribute to poor cost and schedule outcomes are systemic to the way that the acquisition process is organized and managed in the Department of Defense. In this paper, the authors discuss a few of these problems and how they may be contributing to inefficiency and unrealistic expectations. The paper includes recommendations regarding the role of the Service Chiefs in the acquisition process, the role of the Combatant Commands in the requirements process, the impact of joint duty on the acquisition process, and the growing emphasis on management processes at the expense of workforce initiative.

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Document Details

  • Copyright: RAND Corporation
  • Availability: Web-Only
  • Year: 2009
  • Pages: 16
  • Document Number: OP-262-OSD

Citation

Chicago Manual of Style

Blickstein, Irv and Charles Nemfakos, Improving Acquisition Outcomes: Organizational and Management Issues. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009. https://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP262.html.
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Research conducted by

The research described in this report was prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Th e research was conducted in the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community.

This publication is part of the RAND occasional paper series. RAND occasional papers were products of RAND from 2003 to 2013 that included informed perspectives on a timely policy issue, discussions of new research methodologies, essays, papers presented at a conference, and summaries of work in progress.

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