Foundations of a defense digital platform : business systems governance in the Department of Defense

In 2010, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) spent more than $35 billion on information systems development and sustainment, with nearly $7 billion to defense business systems investments alone. It is not surprising given the scale of expenditure and complexity of the enterprise that its track record on business systems investments has not been great. Indeed, the DoD's investment management practices have been the target of many studies identifying critical concerns with how the taxpayers' dollars are spent. The get-well plan, according to these same studies, is to apply "industry best practices" to achieve the same results. Yet this view fails to adequately account for the underlying issues that give rise to these symptoms. Mistrust and confusion in governance decision structures, strategic goal misalignment, externally driven metrics that incentivize the wrong behavior, and a culture of guarding rather than sharing information were among the dominant challenges identified through stakeholder interviews. Cross-cutting issues included language barriers between the Services and Corporate DoD that impede knowledge integration and complicate performance measurement. These systemic foundational problems are deeply rooted in the nature of this public administration network and in the cultures of its strongly independent member institutions. Resolving these dysfunctional characteristics requires more than a transformation "playbook" of best practice initiatives. This research sets the trajectory for meaningful progress in defense business systems investment planning and management by outlining the fundamental changes that must occur, anchored by a more robust and transparent governance framework.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Ziegler, Dustin P

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jayakanth Srinivasan.

• Engineering Systems Division.
• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/70826

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/70826