IDA's Integrated Risk Assessment and Management Model

The Department of Defense (DoD), like most other large public organizations, has traditionally made most of its resource allocation decisions in organizational or mission area stovepipes, with limited success in optimizing across those stovepipes. For many years, much public policy literature has claimed that such suboptimization is inevitable. IDA's Integrated Risk and Management Model (IRAMM) approach will not eliminate this thorny problem. However, it offers a viable way to attack it head-on: a means for the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reduce the extent of that suboptimization and move toward a more holistic optimization across the enterprise. Specifically, the four-phase IRAMM process can help the Secretary and the Chairman immediately in their efforts with senior advisors and aides to balance DoD's forces and capabilities by using strategic risk mitigation as the chief measure of merit. IRAMM is a well-tested approach and includes strong scales that permit comparisons and trades across major missions, time periods, and program alternatives. IDA researchers developed IRAMM (for OSD and the JS) and have employed it in several pilot-tests, including a series of not-for-attribution interviews of more than two dozen senior civilian and military officials within DoD. Evaluators included the CJCS and most of the Combatant Commanders, Service Chiefs, and Undersecretaries of Defense. Overall, IRAMM is a flexible approach to strategic risk assessment and management that may be used by DoD and other national security organizations, including the National Security Council. It may be used alone or in conjunction with a variety of other assessments and analytic tools. A key feature of the approach is that the methodology is simple and transparent to the senior decision makers who will need to make overall judgments one way or another on future forces and related security capabilities for the good of the country. Task no. C6251. The original document contains color images.