Another stab at reinventing the Pentagon.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Defense Watch

There is no denying that, on the subject of Defense Department efficiency or lack thereof, Congress is at its wits' end.

Over dozens of House and Senate hearings, lawmakers and witnesses have catalogued a long list of grievances, including excessive overhead spending, wasteful procurement programs, glacial slowness in technological innovation and ineffective methods of recruiting fresh talent.

So in a bold legislative move aimed at lighting a fire under the Pentagon's top leadership, Congress ordered a major shakeup of the department's upper ranks.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 creates a new senior position--undersecretary of defense for business management and information--that would be next in line after the secretary and deputy secretary. This post would absorb two current offices, the deputy chief management officer and the chief information officer. Perhaps the more consequential impact would be a disruption to the pecking order, bumping the undersecretary for acquisition and logistics down one notch.

To ease the disruption, Congress set a Feb. 1, 2017 deadline, to coincide with the start of a new administration.

As expected, there are ongoing talks at the Pentagon about asking Congress to rethink this.

Whereas the law was intended to make the Pentagon run more efficiently, in accordance with corporate America business practices, the mandate has revived a perennial debate on why the government can't operate like the private sector.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter turned to a group of advisers, known as the Defense Business Board, for answers on how to tackle the NDAA mandate to reshuffle the department's org chart.

A group of DBB members led by management consultant Mark H. Ronald, a former CEO of BAE Systems, has been studying the issue, interviewed more than a dozen former Pentagon officials and is expected to submit a plan to Carter in the coming months.

During a recent meeting of the DBB, Ronald suggested that Congress might have underestimated how difficult it is to change the status quo at the Defense Department.

"The secretary and the deputy secretary have asked us: 'How should we implement this? Should we go back to the Congress and suggest modifications?'" Ronald said. Lawmakers are clearly frustrated and want the department to be more agile, but it is at best idealistic to think the Pentagon can behave like a Fortune 500 corporation.

"There are complex companies out there, but nothing comes close...