Old Processes, New World

“That’s the way we’ve always done it.” “Regression analysis.” “These are how are systems are set up.” “There is no money in the budget to revise our systems, so we are stuck with the processes we have.” All of these mantras are what long-standing incumbents, encrusted bureaucracies, managers with a morbid fear of managing change and under-trained trend analysts give as excuses for continuing to do what they have always done in the past. But change is accelerating, hyper-accelerating if you accept inventor/analyst Ray Kurweil’s Singularity Theory: the rate of change is accelerating so fast that if you were to take all the changes in the year 2000 as a single unit of change, at currently-accelerating rates of change (amplified by computer processing speed), by 2100 humanity will have experienced 20,000 year-units of change!

The impact on society, particularly modern and highly wired social structures, is monumental. Not only is the notion of a 20-year “generation” obsolete (the rate of change segments recent demographic cohorts to a mere 3 to 5-year age grouping!), but using the past to generate an understanding the future requires a unique combination of studying macro-trends throughout history with applying new metrics capable of functioning in a hyper-accelerating world. Rapidly moving parts create difficulties in quantifying the variables, and everything seems out of date as it is being deployed. The increasing press for “real time” analysis depends on self-teaching computer programs that can precipitate horrible consequences when they “get it wrong.”

In the world of military procurement, statistics and regression analysis sometimes provide some pretty brutal results. Take for example former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his procurement analysis (found in his recent Duty book) for a replacement for the armored Humvee, a vehicle used to carry troops into harm’s way, but one that has not fared particularly well against mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) found commonly in Iraq and Afghanistan. The replacement – an MRAP (mine-resistant, ambush-protected troop-carrying vehicles, pictured above) – adds anywhere from $600,000 to $1 million in costs over and above the cost of an up-armored Humvee, but its V-shaped bottom and repositioned armor makes it vastly safer for driver and occupants from IED blasts.

But a traditional DoD cost-benefit analysis showed that the number of military casualties, including considering future trending analysis, just didn’t justify the extra expense. Apparently, the death benefit and military disability costs weren’t factored in at a heavy enough emphasis to make a difference. Gates protested, forcing these MRAPs into the military procurement budget, at the expense of some of the other “must haves” requested by top commanders.

However, after a field trip to Iraq in April of 2007 after ordering these new vehicles, Gates “was told that because there was not enough money, only 1,300 MRAPs had been built out of about 6,000 ordered. When he initially pushed for more rapid procurement, ‘not a single senior [Pentagon] official, civilian or military, supported his proposal for a crash program to buy MRAPs,’ said Christopher J. Lamb, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for resources and plans and now at the National Defense University.

“Gates decided ‘to make the MRAPs the Pentagon’s number one acquisition priority for moral reasons,’ Lamb told a June 24 House Armed Services Committee hearing. Gates ‘believed America should do everything possible to protect the volunteers it sends to war,’ Lamb said… Field commanders in Iraq had begun putting in piecemeal requests for MRAPs as early as June 2003, but in Washington ‘those in charge of Pentagon requirements did not think these options were a good fit for the U.S. military,’ Lamb said.” Washington Post, July 8^th. The military saw limited value in future wars – wars that might be fought more with drones than boots on the ground – and if a few folks had to die in the process, that’s was the risk of war. The excess MRAPs would be mothballed.

“Despite MRAPs’ success in Iraq and more recently in Afghanistan, Gates’s procurement decision is still controversial within the military and among outside experts… Lamb pointed out to the House committee a danger that senior civilian Defense Department officials ‘frustrated with Pentagon processes are increasingly inclined to jettison disciplined defense analyses in favor of intuitive and impressionistic decision-making, which I think would be a mistake.’” The Post.

What’s the big picture lesson in all this? Perhaps lessons? One has to be the American tradition of placing civilian political leaders over entire military. The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief. He appoints, with the advice and consent of the Senate, senior civilian heads of the Department of Defense. Second is that the procurement process and its implementation might not fit the policy directives that our leaders need to make the military work within a world where popular support is as important as military capacity.

As we have seen in the Veterans Administration, the IRS and other federal agencies plagued with scandals, archaic information systems and computer processes are hopeless out-of-date to run government, but these very systems tend to fall by the wayside when budget priorities are addressed. The resulting waste and collateral damage is often staggering. Want to make good decisions? Then train your supervisors, create disincentives to cheat and prioritize updating information systems way, way above current practices. Conform the procurement systems to what we really need… not just what those with special interests would prefer.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the old “pennywise and pound foolish” saying is more relevant than ever today.