The Government Accountability Office is telling the Defense Department to clamp down on inefficiencies in its 19 agencies and 8 field activities — collectively known as the “Fourth Estate.”
While DoD spends billions annually on these defense agencies and DoD field activities to maintain business functions, it “does not comprehensively or routinely assess the continuing need” for them, according to a report published last week by the watchdog agency.
The Defense Department has agreed to act on GAO’s five recommendations to fix the problems. However, the DoD official who signed off — Chief Management Officer John Gibson — is reportedly being terminated by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis for non-performance.
A former U.S. Air Force finance official with a long defense industry resume, Gibson is the first-ever CMO. The job was established last year in the largest reorganization of the DoD since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.
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Jeff Lau, the acting regional commissioner for the Northeast and Caribbean region of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, says robotic process automation (RPA) could save the acquisition workforce from having to waste time on administrative “cutting and pasting” tasks.
“I’ve seen the workforce shrink over the last five-to-10 years. When I first started my career at GSA, there was a lot more opportunity to do training. Now we’re heads-down, doing the work, because if they’re not doing the work, who else is? I think there’s an opportunity for us to provide training with their freed-up time, to develop them into a more well-rounded acquisition workforce,” Lau said last week at an event sponsored by the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC).
As signaled by the Office of Management and Budget 
