Management shakeup looms at defense.

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

* When a new secretary of defense takes the helm at the Pentagon at the outset of the next administration, he or she will have to deal with a potentially chaotic staff reorganization that Congress signed into law.

The new org chart for the office of the secretary of defense is a product of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act. The law created a new undersecretary of defense for business management and information who would take on the duties currently performed by the deputy chief management officer and the chief information officer.

Congress' intent was not to inflate the office of the secretary of defense--which many politicos on Capitol Hill criticize for being bloated--but to compel the Pentagon to clean up its act in areas like business reforms and information technology investments.

Also significant is where the new undersecretary would fit in the Pentagon hierarchy. The post will move into the third ranking position at the Defense Department underneath the secretary and deputy secretary--a position now held by the undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics.

The power shakeup is more far reaching than typical bureaucratic shuffling. Besides demoting the weapons acquisition chief, the law is requiring the Pentagon to elevate the management of day-to-day business operations and information systems as higher priorities than they currently are.

The NDAA requires the new undersecretary to be in place by January 2017. The date was set so the responsibility for reorganizing the Defense Department's senior ranks would fall on the next administration. Although that deadline is more than a year away, the Pentagon is already drawing up plans.

"The office of the deputy chief management officer has conducted initial fact-finding efforts in this area in order to provide informed options for the secretary," said Defense Department spokesman Navy Cmdr. Bill Urban.

The NDAA provision is part a larger congressional effort to prod federal agencies to rethink how they buy information systems. The Pentagon is the largest consumer of IT in the federal government with a $37 billion annual budget. Having the undersecretary for business management overseeing CIO duties is a "big deal" for the Pentagon, although not uncommon in other federal agencies, said Dave Wennergren, former Defense Department CIO and now senior vice president of the Professional Services Council.

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