Some Cautionary Tales about Government Efficiency

ByKenneth Allard

December 1, 2024

In the month since Donald Trump's astonishing landslide, few initiatives have been more intriguing than his dramatic announcement that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will open a new White House-level Office of Government Efficiency. Its probable targets include those hardy Beltway perennials of waste, fraud and abuse as well as cutting a federal bureaucracy grown like Topsy whenever its lordly denizens actually report to work. The canonical example: That Carter-era abomination known as the Department of Education, seen by the incoming administration as the protector of teachers' unions and usurper-in-chief of parental responsibilities best reserved for the several states. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/new-details-emerge-about-the-department-of-government-efficiency-s-proposed-cuts-to-federal-workforces/

Although prickly Democrats have already promised resistance in Congress and the courts, Republicans seem to be on a roll, despite their paper-thin majorities as well as those other hardy Beltway perennials known as 'elections.' Now in my dotage, I can well remember similar circumstances when in July 1985 President Reagan empaneled a blue-ribbon commission headed by David Packard, founder and Chairman of Hewlett-Packard. As an industrialist and public servant, Packard was a most formidable man. So too were the objectives of his reforms: The overall organization and management of the nation's defense establishment, particularly its development and procurement of weapons systems.

Re-reading his final report nearly forty years later is enough to make is enough to make anyone cry, because those words still resonate: "DOD must displace systems and structures that measure quality by regulatory compliance and solve problems by executive fiat. Excellence in defense management cannot be achieved by the numerous management layers, large staffs and countless regulations in place today." https://dair.nps.edu/bitstream/123456789/3705/1/SEC809-RL-86-0106.pdf

However imperfect, the Packard Commission provided a continuing blueprint for reform. It spurred landmark changes, particularly the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, that elevated improved armed forces teamwork to our highest defense priority. Just four years later, Saddam Hussein provided that milestone legislation with the ultimate readiness test of high-intensity joint combat. By then, General Norman Schwarzkopf had reduced its complexities to a wonderfully succinct directive: "You get off that plane and you're working for me!"

After working for Congressman Nichols as an Army Congressional Fellow, a series of bizarre happenstances placed me several years later astride one of the Packard Commission's principle remaining goals: Reforming the laws affecting defense acquisition. And what an odd fate: I was not a lawyer, knew nothing about weapons acquisition and seemingly had nothing in common with its practitioners. But my experience with Pentagon reform had left me with many useful object lessons in "the art of the possible"- some of which might interest Messrs Musk and Ramaswami.

The first was recognizing that the operational environment surrounding defense procurement was a series of mutually suspicious and well-armed encampments - not unlike the warring factions I later encountered in Bosnia. Bring up any issue, no matter how benign it might seem on the surface, and you should proceed only after doing your homework to determine the most realistic limits of the possible; otherwise, just like with Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, you were likely to emerge only after a long and pointless discussion of lineage, parentage and the egregious failings of persons who may or may not have been present.

We also had to understand precisely where we were. Our charter asked us to analyze the laws affecting defense acquisition. Well, how many of those laws were there? It took some painstaking research but we eventually came up with the astounding total of 800 laws! What was even worse: Each one of those laws generated multiple enabling regulations, the usual ratio being 1:3. So our 800 procurement laws were magically responsible for procreating at least 2400 regulations, an endlessly expanding crowd of orphans every time Congress passed a new law! Where and how could it all end - and what could our advisory panel do about it?

It took a little over two years to answer those questions, putting in place a comprehensive structure to review those laws, analyze their impact and make a well-documented case for retention, amendment or repeal. We kept close contact with our armed camps by ensuring that our reviews and recommendations fully considered their opinions - pro or con. Although often tempted to conclude that this was merely a fool's errand, I was very pleasantly surprised when newly-inaugurated President Bill Clinton made our report the basis for his "reinventing government" initiatives.

So the good news is that these reforms eventually transformed all of federal procurement: The bad news is that, thirty years later, we need to do it all over again! Either way: Good luck, Elon and Vivek!

COL (Ret) Ken Allard is a former West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst.

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