Oh, my! Dems trying to fix Pentagon management? This could be good, but it's so hidden, who'd know?
http://thehill.com/business--lobby/deputy-defense-secretary-wary-of-fixes-to-pentagon-management-2007-06-27.html Deputy defense secretary wary of fixes to Pentagon management
By Roxana Tiron
June 27, 2007
Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England is rejecting congressional directives to alter Pentagon management, arguing that legislative fixes in the 2008 House and Senate defense authorization bills could be an additional bureaucratic burden on the Department of Defense (DoD).
Both House and Senate defense authorizers took steps to spur change in the Pentagon’s business processes, but the two chambers will have to iron out some differences when the two defense authorization bills get to conference.
Currently, the House bill gives the secretary of defense more flexibility in structuring the management team than the Senate legislation does.
The House and Senate bills call for the creation of a Pentagon chief management officer. The Senate version also calls for the establishment of a full-time undersecretary of defense to ensure management problems identified by the comptroller general receive continuous attention. Despite Pentagon objections, Senate authorizers defined management responsibilities rather than leaving that up to the Pentagon.
England said the Pentagon leadership prefers the House’s bill to the Senate’s, but stressed that neither “is needed in the department.” England said one of his initiatives upon becoming second civilian-in-command at the Pentagon was to reduce “our own directives to shrink the bureaucracy as much as possible.”
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