Foundation Forum

Lt. Col. David London
Program Manager
Defense Acquisition Deskbook
AFA Symposium
Colorado Springs, Colo.
May 24, 1996

I'd like to thank the Air Force Association for inviting me here. I have been in positions where we were establishing new communications with different groups, and I am honored to be in that type of position now.

The Acquisition Deskbook is a software tool, but it is far more than that. It is the implementation of many acquisition reform initiatives and an integral part of the acquisition reform effort. We report to Mrs. Colleen Preston, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Reform and to Mr. Irv Blickstein, the Director of Acquisition Program Integration.

You can't have an acquisition reform briefing without using the term "paradigm shift." That is a new requirement. So, here are some of the paradigm shifts we are talking about.

First of all, for those of you who are familiar with the rewrite of the DoD Directive 5000 series, it supports the issue that not all guidance is mandatory, although it was perceived that way. There were close to 1,500 pages and a lot of stuff that really wasn t intended as mandatory even though it was interpreted either by the field or by the inspectors and auditors to be mandatory. So people felt they were tied to a specific procedure. Acquisition reform is saying, "Use judgment, do what is smart, and don t feel like your hands are tied."

The intent is to provide empowerment through insight. In some people s minds, empowerment means the bookshelf filled with regulations and policy will be taken away and you are now on your own. The program manager is still saying, "What do I do?" You can t have empowerment without providing some degree of insight. You want to provide people information so they can make an informed decision. That s where we are moving. Letting people do what is smart, but giving the background and the information they need to understand what is the smart thing to do in a particular situation.

Distribution of this information must consider audience over author. How do we normally provide information to people who have to do things in the field? We ve got policy letters. We ve got regulations. We ve got handbooks. We ve got newsletters. We put out World Wide Web sites. Overwhelmingly, information is provided to people in the field in the most convenient way for the people who are providing that information. The person in the field is left to figure out where to look and what information is needed for the job. Most importantly, they try to integrate that information because a lot of it is going to redundant.

That is on the optimistic side. In the real world, we are finding a lot of information is really contradictory. The person in the field is getting a barrage of information and is trying to figure out how to fit it together. We are trying to turn that around and are getting the right people together. This is where we are applying the Integrated Process Team [IPT] process at the policy development level. We have new groups getting together at OSD and the Service level to integrate that information at the source, eliminate the redundancy, eliminate the contradictions and put it in a single package. We are now distributing information that is most convenient for the person who is using the information.

Through that process, we are reducing redundancy in the ways information is put out now. Everywhere you go, you see a different handbook. I was visiting the Defense Nuclear Agency and they had a Program Manager s Handbook, which in their minds, told how they do acquisition. They had sections on where to address nuclear hardening, if appropriate. Their intent was for every program manager to be looking at their handbook and finding information on how to do it.

The handbook has been out for six years. I looked at their distribution list and three copies went to Wright-Patterson [AFB, Ohio]. There are more than three people at the base doing acquisition. It is not getting to the people who need the information. The integration is not happening. We are reducing the number of handbooks and putting the appropriate information into a consolidated packet.

The Deskbook is where we ve got the new DoD 5000 series regulations. We ve got the regulations like DFARS [Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement], and we ve got all those handbooks that traditionally have been put out by different organizations.

Experience is extremely hard to capture, but it has been done. Lessons learned were in libraries, newsletters and in contracted-out systems to develop intelligence for other organizations. For the most part, it was phone calls and conversations over the cubicle wall. All sorts of information is essential for the person to do their job. We are trying to integrate that into a single computer-based system that clearly delineates what is mandatory, such as the new DoD 5000 and the regulations, policies, statutory requirements, from what is discretionary. It lets the person fully understand where they have the freedom to make a decision.

We are pushing the technology in a couple of different areas. Right now, we have two separate areas which we see merging together to some extent by the end of the year. I feel obligated to answer our most frequently asked questions: "Why aren t you just doing this on the World Wide Web, and why are you using a CD-ROM? Let e address what we can do on the World Wide Web and how we are going to be distributing this system on CD-ROMs starting next week.

First of all, Mrs. Preston has asked us to provide a single entry point for anyone surfing the Web. In a lot of cases, you need a starting point for any questions that have anything to do with DoD acquisition. For the most part, we are doing that through links to other Web sites. We connect to the Defense Link, the Air Force Acquisition Link and the home pages at different locations and the different Services.

We are also providing an open bulletin board for people to post ideas, share information and share practices. We are already seeing questions posted concerning the same issues we ve been hearing about this morning such as what is going on with the SBIRS program? What are some of the successes? What are some of the failures? With a lot of different pilot programs going on, people are taking advantage of the freedom they ve got in acquisition reform.

We have to capture that experience, find out what works and share what works. There are also a handful of question and answer packages. If someone wants an interpretation on policy, we ve been asked to establish a single point where someone can submit a question. We are working directly with Defense Acquisition University, DAU, to have the appropriate organizations farm out those questions and post the answer. It is not authoritative, but a knowledgeable answer.

A knowledgeable answer is done by someone who knows the system and does the research, but it is not authoritative and not supposed to be interpreted as new policy. We don t want people to build the collection of questions and answers and call this a "New Policy Book."

Finally, we ve been providing, because we saw a need for it, a master schedule of events, with conferences over the next few months so people who want to plan can see where the different Service road shows are going to be, what activities are going on, and can integrate their plans into that one schedule. There did not seem to be any other place where that service was being provided. That is the Acquisition Deskbook Web site. It takes advantage of current Web browser technology with Mosaic, Netscape or the new Microsoft browser.

But, we are providing things in the Deskbook that those Web browsers can t do. If you look at this as an information system, like an encyclopedia, we have created a generic table of contents for how the Department of Defense does acquisition. Instead of each organization having to put in their information, such like as the Defense Nuclear Agency creating a whole handbook, people can look in the areas where we talking about requirements development. If you need to talk about nuclear hardening, there are some words that you should have in your requirements statement. As a matter of fact, you can just copy and paste this paragraph into your requirements document.

The Department of Defense, the Services and Agencies all package it together so we have visibility from the top level down and across Services. It gives us the opportunity to truly share information across the Services and across different types of programs and different organizations.

We tie into a reference library because we need to refer to key documents. I go back to DoD 5000,the DFAR and others. We have a booth set up outside the conference, and I d like to invite you to stop by and see the contents of the system and the capability o search and find information. This is a bookshelf where you can essentially identify a specific book, chapter and section. Just click on it, and it will bring up the entire text of that section.

Another area where there has been a whole lot of redundancy in efforts is in software tools to support acquisition. We ve been able to find about 18 different tools that are advertised as helping create RFPs. There are at least 17 organizations that are not aware of another tool already available when they either contracted out or developed their own. We are trying to create a master list of available software. With this available before they start any new development of software tools, people can find out what is already available in the acquisition world.

Finally, the front-line wisdom area is an area where people actively capture lessons learned, best practices, and experience, especially from the pilot programs, to share that information and integrate it into a single package. This CD can open multiple windows at the same time giving the capability to have lessons learned and the regulation on side-by-side screens. Documents and their supplements can also be on side-by-side screens.

You can't have a new effort without having new acronyms. I d like to introduce you to one of them. The charter is being written right now and is in coordination for the Defense Acquisition Policy Steering Group [DAPSG]. Deskbook is not just a software tool, it is an integral part of things in support of acquisition reform. The Defense Acquisition Policy Steering Group is co-chaired by Mrs. Preston and Mr. Blickstein and has representatives from each of the Service Acquisition Executives. For the Air Force, it is Mr. Blaise Durante. It also has functional representatives from OSD to work together and continually update policy. With all that is changing, we need a system that keeps our policy consistent and distribution responsive. They are the standing review organization to ensure that is happening.

Each of those individuals is also responsible for bringing in Service or Component-specific information. We use "Component" instead of "Service" because one of the big players has been the Defense Logistics Agency. For sample tools and formats, we are getting support from NAVAIR PMA-250. They are consolidating the descriptions of software tools. We are looking at having any GS-15 or O-6 as the approval level for the wisdom files. Finally, as I have talked about, the questions and answers will be going through the Defense Acquisition University schools.

It is nice to be on schedule with something. At the office, they have compiled the final release scheduled for next Tuesday. With any new software package, after a test cycle to fix bugs, you ve just got to validate that you have fixed what you thought you fixed and that you didn t break anything else. We are on schedule for an initial release by close of business Tuesday [May 31]. We will be delivering a master CD-ROM to the Government Printing Office for distribution within 10 days to 4,200 orders. The intent of this first release is to validate our distribution system and start building experience with this tool. We want people in the field to understand what it is and how to use it. But, also building experience with people in the Headquarters to understand what it can do for them. We have to get something in the field bfore we get the total buy-in, but that is coming very quickly.

We will have at least the information that was in the old DoD 5000.2 and 5000.2M, specifically identified as discretionary information with links between that and the new DoDD 5000 where appropriate. We will have a complete reference library.

Right now we are looking at having around 18,000 pages of information available on the CD-ROM. As I said, initial distribution will be on CD. We are moving towards a host client server capability so we don t have to redistribute the CDS with every release. But for right now, that is the way we are going with it. The official first release, is scheduled for the end of July.

We are now at a point where we are ready to deploy the first time around and we will be continually going through the deployment, feedback and refinement cycle. The initial development is where the program office will focus most of our attention improving the technical capabilities. Making it better, faster, more capable, and better at meeting people s needs will result from feedback, refinements and taking advantage of the extremely rapidly emerging technology.

The second area is the structure of information. The area that we see as the most dynamic and changing during the process is the content itself, the information we are providing. This truly is not just another one of those new software tools. It is integrated into the acquisition reform effort. It is designed to facilitate things that could not happen without a responsive tool like this.

I usually close by saying we have an audience who is responsible for and in some ways, creating information and the requirements affecting the acquisition process. Here is a tool you can use to share information and help guide other people do their jobs in the future. By the way, we did find out that since this a largely industry-sided audience, if we get information developed by industry, we are even putting the company logo on the material to give credit to those who created the information.

MS. LANTZY: How can contractors order the CD? Will it run under MAC, PC or both?

LT. COL. LONDON: You can order the CD and we have order forms on the table right outside. For those of you who have been using the FAR on-line service with its fees of close to $600 a year, our annual subscription is going to be a whopping $35 a year. We hope to have a Macintosh version by the end of the summer. We have used a specific language in developing the tools that is supposed to be very easy to compile into Macintosh native language. We haven t gotten there quite yet. It will run if you have a Macintosh using SoftWindows or some other Windows emulators, but right now, it is primarily designed for Windows 3.1. It works in Windows 95 and in the future will better take advantage of the capabilities of Windows 95.

MS. LANTZY: Thank you Colonel London for your presentation on the Deskbook Program.

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