On this edition of On DoD, we revisit a special series Federal News Radio aired last month on federal acquisition: The Missing Pieces of Procurement Reform.

This week’s show features extended versions of two of the interviews we conducted for that series but haven’t aired so far. We begin with a veteran observer of the DOD acquisition process, Paul Francis, the managing director for acquisition and sourcing management at the government accountability office. He’s been studying and reporting on DoD weapons system procurements for more than 30 years, and is one of more than 30 defense experts that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations asked to submit essays on the way forward for procurement reform.

In that essay, and in our interview, Francis says Congress should not focus on writing more rules and regulations. Rather, he says, lawmakers and DoD managers need to take a hard look at the bureaucratic incentives that routinely deliver overly expensive systems. As Francis puts it, the system is in equilibrium.

Later in the program, we hear a private sector view on the way ahead for federal acquisition reform, Kevin Kelly, the CEO of LGS Innovations, joins us.

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