Note: The article below is excerpted and re-organized content based on a virtual conference hosted by the American Society of Military Comptrollers (ASMC) with presenters Nikki Cabezas (US Army Director), Edwin Keene (Deputy CFO at DCSA), Dawn Sedgley (President of cBEYONData), and Jonathan Allen (Executive Vice President at Decision Lens)
Adopting new technology has been difficult for the Department of Defense (DoD) as emerging capabilities from smaller vendors tend to wither during the well-known “Valley of Death.” While overcoming this phenomenon is critical for the DoD writ large, it is equally necessary to truly improve the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process.
The panel focused heavily on data management – an area the private sector has evolved greatly over the last decade, but the government has struggled with. Fortunately, the DoD has recognized the necessity of improving data management tools and introducing training for its financial management (FM) professionals to carry out the PPBE process effectively. However, there are several obstacles to overcome.
Lack of communication between FM and IT teams. Attitudes toward adopting new technology within the DoD’s FM community need to change. Technological modernization for its own sake fails to consider the day-to-day needs and specific use cases of the FM workforce. According to Ms. Nikki Cabezas, DoD ITgroups often deliver new technology that does not meet the needs of the end-user. “We do not always design systems for the users that are going to end up using them” she said. “A lot of the time I see something gets developed, fielded, and out to the end user, and they say, ‘that is not at all what we needed.’ That is too common and unfortunate.”
Inability to efficiently leverage private sector innovation. FM leadership and IT groups within the DoD must communicate their respective needs and solutions, but this can only happen in the greater context of communication between the DoD and industry leaders. “Sometimes financial managers and leaders look to industry to bring in tools and capabilities, but those tools and capabilities do not fit the needs of the organization, so then they go back to saying ‘well, I am probably just better off staying on spreadsheets or SharePoint or potentially building a homegrown solution,” said Jonathan Allen. Technology can modernize specific PPBE tasks, but in order for the DoD to fully reform the PPBE process from start to finish, it should approach the private sector with the need for comprehensive, integrated solutions. Though it may cause short-term pain, the DoD will benefit from deeper collaboration with industry leaders to deliberately combine technological solutions to address the PPBE process as a whole. Otherwise, reform efforts will remain disjointed, which discourages FM leadership from embracing new tools.
Lack of tool uniformity across the DoD. The DoD suffers from having too many systems which all function slightly differently. This approach creates challenges with user adoption, complicates training, and prevents enterprise-wide data views at the highlight levels of leadership. When individual offices rely on all different platforms, it creates data redundancy which leads to data integrity issues. "What happens is you start replicating data in multiple different places. It starts to get out of control because the logic in one system versus another does not always match, and you start to get different answers for the same question,” Ms. Cabezas said. She suggested it would be ideal to design “a holistic end-to-end solution” for financial managers, since PPBE is a holistic, end-to-end process.
No enterprise-wide Data governance. If organizations continue to blindly adopt multiple new technologies without going through the rigor of understanding their current work practices and needs, the following data replication complicates data governance. Technology alone cannot provide the DoD with proper data governance. Instead, it is necessary to train FM personnel in specific roles as data governors who can explain and defend budget requests.
The DoD does not currently understand the value of its financial data, and therefore does not practice proper data governance at all. “We do not do it. That’s it, plain and simple,” said Ms. Cabezas. “We have a very large and complicated ecosystem of how data flows throughout the PPBE process and throughout technology. We don’t really have our arms wrapped around it. It’s a complex problem that’s going to take a complex solution,” Cabezas concluded.
Ultimately, the panel intimated at a broader problem – solutions are chosen to solve process issues, not to deliver outcomes. The best way to solve this is by adopting a broader enterprise view that focuses on process improvement to reach a clearly defined end state.
The DoD will not be able to wrap its arms around data governance until it establishes what questions the data is meant to answer.
Determining the desired outcome – be it faster decision timelines, more efficient spending of taxpayer dollars, or a more transparent process, all these improvements to PPBE require enterprise data governance. Solving for the issues discussed in the panel will be ineffective without first understanding the data needed to reach the desired outcome.
Leadership must account for the daily needs and requirements of end-users to ensure they adopt new technology. Next, communication between IT professionals and financial managers must be improved to ensure the right solutions are purchased. Finally, improving collaboration with private sector leaders will simplify adoption to get innovative technology into the DoD faster.
While some of these suggestions will likely require reform, many of these changes demand strong leadership to drive change in their organization, which is possible under today’s system.
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