House Armed Services Commitee Releases Report.

Today, the House Armed Services Committee’s Panel on Business Challenges Within the Defense Industry released their report: Challenges to Doing Business with the Department of Defense.

The report includes several key recommendations, including:

• Requiring the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Service Secretaries, to develop a long-term strategy for maintaining a robust and effective defense industrial base.
• Requiring the Secretary of Defense to develop policies and mechanisms to improve communication with industry to better enable industry to allocate independent R&D resources and make investments to meet the future needs of the Department.
• Ensuring that work being reserved for small business performance is actually performed by small businesses.
• Continuing to rebuild the breadth and depth of the defense acquisition workforce which will, in all likelihood, save money and improve acquisition outcomes.
• Simplifying and streamlining the acquisition process by conducting a comprehensive review of the laws and regulations that govern the acquisition process in order to repeal or amend regulations that are outdated or have had unintended consequences that outweigh the original intent of the regulation.