{"id":18467,"date":"2020-05-07T19:40:54","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T19:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2020\/05\/07\/pentagon-cmo-open-to-changes-to-office-but-confident-in-reform-efforts\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T21:46:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:46:05","slug":"pentagon-cmo-open-to-changes-to-office-but-confident-in-reform-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/pentagon\/2020\/05\/07\/pentagon-cmo-open-to-changes-to-office-but-confident-in-reform-efforts\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon CMO open to changes to office, but confident in reform efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 With a congressionally-requested report recommending the Pentagon\u2019s chief management officer role be eliminated<\/a>, the current occupant of that office says she is open to new organizational ideas, as long as they do not cause a backslide in what she perceives as the forward momentum achieved by her office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m focused on the outcomes. Strengthening responsibilities and authorities and expectations and goals and targets \u2014 that\u2019s always a good thing, we should be doing that, always,\u201d Lisa Hershman told Defense News in a Thursday interview. \u201cI think the worst-case scenario is reform slows down or starts to slide backwards<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, Congress elevated<\/a> the deputy chief management officer position to a full CMO role, officially designating the CMO the number three official in the department. The goal: to appoint a lead for reform efforts inside the Pentagon, after years of internal modifications had failed to produce significant savings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in late 2019, members of Congress expressed a belief that the CMO\u2019s office had not had significant success and requested an independent review<\/a> by the Defense Business Board on what the organization should look like going forward. That report, released Wednesday, recommended eliminating the CMO position, with three options for what the reform position could look like going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DBB report looked back to the early days of the CMO\u2019s office, including the many years in which it was really a deputy CMO job with lesser responsibilities. While Hershman noted that was what the group was tasked with, she said it was somewhat \u201crooted in the past,\u201d as the current CMO setup \u2014 fully empowered as the number three official in the department \u2014 has only been around for roughly two years, with Hershman herself only confirmed as the CMO in December of last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hershman said she was \u201cvery intrigued\u201d by perhaps the most radical of the three proposals, which would take the deputy secretary of defense job, number two in the department, and split it into a pair of DSDs, one focused on strategies and policy and another for resources and management, with the caveat that she wanted to look more into the details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cConsidering the size of DoD, I think being able to have people focus on really important stuff like strategy and policy, like resources, would be something that could be very beneficial to the secretary,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, she suggested a fourth option: giving the CMO more clarity on roles and authorities, whether through legislation from Congress or direction inside the building, which would allow the office to more effectively go about its job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One change has already happened this year. In a Jan. 6 memo, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper expanded Hershman\u2019s authorities over the budget, essentially making the CMO\u2019s office the coordinating team<\/a> for developing the so-called \u201cfourth estate\u201d budget requests. Previously all those offices would submit their budget requests individually along with the Army, Air Force and Navy; for the fiscal year 2022 budget development, Hershman will serve as almost a service secretary for the fourth estate offices, overseeing their budget development process before presenting a unified budget alongside the services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CMO\u2019s office in FY19 validated $6.5 billion in savings through reform efforts, with a $7.7 billion target set for this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\t