No Defense Budget Data for You!

Older readers will recognize the title of this article as an adaptation of the infamous soup nazi’s barked order from the 1990s comedy series Seinfeld. All joking aside, industry may soon see less transparency in the Department of Defense’s annual budget request.

The DOD usually publishes its request in two pieces – Excel workbooks containing budget line item (BLI) data and justification books in .pdf format that detail most of the programs listed in the Excel workbooks. The information the DOD provides is for unclassified programs only. Despite this fact, the DOD has over the years reported less data on even unclassified programs. For example, the DOD used to publish an Excel workbook detailing unclassified defense information technology investments called the IT-1. The last IT-1 appeared in FY 2021, however, and there hasn’t been a new one released since.

Providing less information has made it harder for industry to understand where investment dollars are going. Now, that challenge may be about to become much worse thanks to recommendations issued by the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform Commission. The Commission’s interim report lists more than a dozen recommendations for “reforming” the DOD’s annual budget request. These have been integrated into a DOD implementation plan that is available here.

Two of the Commission’s recommendations concern BLI data and the justification books mentioned above. According to the plan, “The DoD’s budget structure consists of numerous budget lines and accounts that the Commission asserts sometimes make it difficult for DoD to manage defense programs and for Congress to clearly track and understand them. The Commission recommended that Congress and DoD work together to review and restructure budget lines and accounts where appropriate.”

Accordingly, the DOD intends to assess how BLI data can be presented differently. Underlying the assessment is the claim that “the number of BLIs has increased [over the last decade] due to the propensity to segregate program content to retain transparency into specific projects for the Department and the congressional defense committees.”

How will the department deal with this transparency? By eliminating it.

The feasibility assessment will, “Reduce the existing number of BLIs in order to increase the Department’s agility in executing budgets while still retaining relationship linkage into programs and funding details. Consolidate, where possible, non-Major Defense Acquisition Programs into aggregated meaningful portfolio groupings, [and] Group technology projects to allow flexibility that would foster innovation and promote efficiency.”

Whenever something is “reduced” or “consolidated” granularity is lost. Perhaps I am wrong in jumping to the conclusion that we will see less BLI transparency as a result of the DOD’s efforts, but this is the direction that every similar reform effort has gone in recent years. Data, such as that in the IT-1, is simply no longer reported to the public.

Concerning the justification books, the language used in regard to “restructuring” their format is similarly troubling. To wit, the DOD’s objective for the justification books will be to “Streamline exhibits to evenly and efficiently present program details and requirements.” Again, “streamlining” often seems to reduce granularity and transparency?

The trend in recent years has been for the DOD to hold back more and more of its budget data. It remains to be seen what the impact of these reforms will be, but experience says that industry should expect less data and less transparency.