RELO Roundtable…a gathering place

Movers aren't the only ones frustrated by the military's arcane procurement processes

Seems that it's not just small mom-and-pop moving and storage companies or independent household goods motor carriers who find it difficult to do business with Uncle Sam.

On Mar 20 2012, the House Armed Services Committee’s Panel on Business Challenges Within the Defense Industry released a comprehensive, eye-opening report Challenges to Doing Business with the Department of Defense: Findings of the Panel on Business Challenges in the Defense Industry.

The report is the culmination of six months of work examining the problems, pitfalls and inherent challenges that businesses – particularly small and medium sized businesses – face when working with the Department of Defense (DOD).

Members of the House panel met with or heard testimony from more than 150 people from around the country representing government, industry, think tanks, and academia.

They found that “navigating the defense acquisitions process is difficult for all businesses, but is particularly difficult for small businesses."

The114 page report outlines a set of 10 compelling recommendations that should be taken to make the defense acquisition process leaner, less risk adverse, improve business to government relations and embrace emerging technologies.

The panels recommendations are both timely and very pertinent to the domestic and international household goods moving industry considering the recent Business Case Analysis (BCA) initiated to investigate the potential outsourcing of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Personal Property Program.

Click Here to Read the Report (PDF)

The report includes several key recommendations, including: 

• Requiring the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Service Secretaries, to develop a long-term strategy for maintaining a robust and effective defense industrial base.
•  Requiring the Secretary of Defense to develop policies and mechanisms to improve communication with industry to better enable industry to allocate independent R&D resources and make investments to meet the future needs of the Department.
• Ensuring that work being reserved for small business performance is actually performed by small businesses. 
• Continuing to rebuild the breadth and depth of the defense acquisition workforce which will, in all likelihood, save money and improve acquisition outcomes.
• Simplifying and streamlining the acquisition process by conducting a comprehensive review of the laws and regulations that govern the acquisition process in order to repeal or amend regulations that are outdated or have had unintended consequences that outweigh the original intent of the regulation.

Some of the officials interviewed “asserted that there are not enough DOD contracting officials available and experienced enough to manage the complexities of the new acquisition programs, or oversee private sector contractors. In their absence, DOD has demonstrated an increased reliance (some would say over-reliance) on the use of private contractors.”

SOURCE: Armed Services Committee

Related Articles:

Update: Outsourcing DOD’s personal property program – RELO Roundtable

Department of Defense/Military Category – RELO Roundtable

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