The Contracting Education Academy

Contracting Academy Logo
You are here: Home / Archives for analytics

By

GAO: Revised analytic approach needed by DoD to support force structure decision-making

To adapt to growing threats, the Department of Defense (DoD) says it must urgently change.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO)  looked at DoD’s process for providing senior leaders with the information they need to adjust the size and capabilities of the U.S. military to meet top defense priorities.

Senior leaders are not getting the information they need to make these important decisions.

In GAO’s March 14, 2019 report, they recommend addressing the following challenges:

  • It is difficult to develop a common “starting point” for force structure analysis.
  • The military services’ analyses largely supported the status quo.
  • There was no way to compare options and identify trade-offs across DoD.

The GAO finds that DoD’s analytic approach has not provided senior leaders with the support they need to evaluate and determine the force structure necessary to implement the National Defense Strategy. DoD’s analytic approach — Support for Strategic Analysis (SSA) — is used by the services to evaluate their force structure needs and develop their budgets. However, GAO found that SSA has been hindered by three interrelated challenges:

  • Products are cumbersome and inflexible. Although DoD guidance states that SSA products are to be common starting points for analysis on plausible threats, including threats identified in strategic guidance, DoD has not kept the products complete and up to date in part because they were highly detailed and complex and therefore cumbersome to develop and analyze.
  • Analysis does not significantly deviate from services’ programmed force structures or test key assumptions. Although DoD’s guidance states that SSA should facilitate a broad range of analysis exploring innovative approaches to mitigate threats identified in the strategy, the services generally have not conducted this type of analysis because guidance has not specifically required the services to do so.
  • DoD lacks joint analytic capabilities to assess force structure. Although DoD guidance states that SSA is intended to facilitate the comparison and evaluation of competing force structure options and cross-service tradeoffs, the department has not conducted this type of analysis because it lacks a body or process to do so.

GAO’s report notes:

DoD efforts to revise its analytic approach are in the early stages and have not yet identified solutions to these challenges. Moreover, DoD has attempted reforms in the past without success. Without a functioning analytic process that addresses the above challenges, senior leaders do not have the analytic support they need to prioritize force structure investments that would best manage risk and address the threats outlined in the National Defense Strategy.

See the GAO’s full report and recommendations here: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-385

By

Can training in critical analytic thinking improve job performance?

For the government, making sure analysts do their jobs well is especially important. Agencies want to confirm they don’t miss crucial clues within data or make assumptions that hinder critical analytic thinking.
Click on image above to download report.

Several agencies have developed training programs in critical analytic thinking. But do these training programs work?

Under government sponsorship, MITRE researchers have conducted a first-of-its-kind study on a test that shows promise in evaluating the effectiveness of critical analytic thinking training. The findings indicate that critical analytic thinking skills are a predictor of job performance for positions involving analytical skills. In addition, the findings suggest that although critical analytic thinking skills are closely aligned with general intelligence, they’re not one and the same.

A team of MITRE experts in behavioral sciences originally created the test to help a government sponsor assess its training courses for developing critical analytic thinking skills. MITRE has written a report on its findings recently published in Personnel Assessment and Decisions, a peer-reviewed human resources journal.

Read more here: https://www.mitre.org/publications/project-stories/can-training-in-critical-analytic-thinking-improve-job-performance

By

The case for evidence in government

Although the U.S. government presides over what collectively must be one of the world’s largest data repositories, its capacity to use that data to build citizen trust and make informed, evidence-based decisions is severely constrained.

As explained in an enlightening report recently issued by the bipartisan Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking (CEP), the mere existence of data is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creating empirical evidence to inform decisions throughout the full lifecycle of public programs—enactment, funding, operation, reform, termination.

The digitization of many facets of various activities the government funds through its $4 trillion annual budget has resulted in a data explosion at federal agencies. But that data needs to be synthesized into actionable information to satisfy taxpayers’ demands for better results and greater transparency. The CEP report makes clear that much remains to be done to achieve that goal and provides a comprehensive plan to improve access to federal data, strengthen privacy protections and expand the public, private and academic research communities’ capacity to analyze data.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2017/09/case-evidence-government/141363

By

Fighting federal procurement fraud — A commentary

Believe it or not, procurement fraud is the second largest economic crime in terms of losses, trailing only theft.

This statistic usually gets overlooked, but it’s one that has affected the federal government for decades. In fact, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, procurement fraud impacts an astounding 29 percent of all organizations each year, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses to government agencies.

Procurement fraud occurs when a company offers goods or services but either fails to deliver, under delivers or rigs the process against the rules to gain an advantage over competitors. Some common forms of procurement fraud include bribery, bid-rigging, embezzlement and submission of false claims. This is especially concerning when you are talking about business to government procurement, considering that money comes straight from the taxpayer. Government needs to find better ways to protect itself from this type of fraud.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/articles/fighting-federal-procurement-fraud-commentary

Contracting Academy Logo
75 Fifth Street, NW, Suite 300
Atlanta, GA 30308
info@ContractingAcademy.gatech.edu
Phone: 404-894-6109
Fax: 404-410-6885

RSS Twitter