Best Practices in Defense Resource Management

The goal of defense resource management is to achieve a cost-effective allocation of resources among the nation's national security objectives. This paper offers senior governmental officials a realistic perspective on the benefits of and obstacles to adopting comprehensive processes for managing defense resources. It provides an organized context tor thinking about the ongoing evolution of established systems and identities the practices required to shape and integrate a nation's most critical defense capabilities. The resource management practices identified in this paper are grounded in the principles of the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System installed in the United States Department of Defense in 1961. Defense resource management, as used in the paper, spans a range of activities, from the definition of mid- to long term defense objectives, through the formulation of intermediate plans to achieve those objectives, to the development and execution of annual budgets that implement the plans, and, finally, to the collection and review of data on the results of actual expenditures and the adjustment of the plans to recognize those results. This paper focuses on the principles and processes that can produce cost-effective resource allocation. Task BA-6-2789.