Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Like all new administrations, U.S. President Joseph Biden's administration will reassess and possibly change the size of the U.S. defense budget. Such a decision involves balancing trade-offs; a larger budget gives the country more funds to promote and defend its global interests, it but also reduces funds available for domestic programs, including those that might do more to boost economic growth. The economic trade-offs associated with defense spending have been underexamined compared with other aspects of the debate about U.S. grand strategy. Yet these trade-offs might be of greater public interest in coming years. In early 2021, as the United States remains in a recession amid the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, questions about how different budget choices affect economic performance might become more salient. Once the immediate crisis has passed, the country will have an even larger public debt than before and might also have to grapple with the question of what level of defense spending is sustainable in the long term. In this report — the first in a series on the security and economic trade-offs associated with competing visions for U.S. grand strategy — the authors examine the relationship between U.S. defense spending and economic growth. To do so, they consider what the effect on growth would be if the United States were to adopt any one of three policy changes: reallocate funds between defense spending and infrastructure investments, change its overall level of defense spending and apply the difference to public debt, or increase taxes to finance defense spending.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Economic shocks are unanticipated changes in the conditions upon which resource allocation decisions are based. Economic shocks include a wide range of events, from typhoons to trade policy changes to mergers and acquisitions-any event that causes a decisionmaker to reconsider such choices as what to buy or sell, how much work to do, what production technology to use, or what price to pay or charge. The concern underlying this report is the possibility that economic shocks could induce the same effects as classic kinetic supply interdiction efforts: the degradation of reliable military capability, diversion of resources from high-priority military initiatives, and imposition of costs. The purpose of this report is to assist Department of Defense (DoD) decisionmakers called upon to respond to adverse economic shocks by identifying opportunities for improving analysis of shocks and their effects on U.S. defense postures. The authors examined historical and hypothetical instances in which shocks threatened or would threaten defense postures to identify questions that an analytic capability might be able to answer. They also reviewed data analysis methods used in the economics literature on shocks. Research findings suggest that DoD might benefit from improving its capability to analyze shocks. Moreover, although existing methods from economics provide insights necessary for achieving the desired analytic capability, they are not sufficient for fully providing that capability. Novel techniques employing multidisciplinary approaches appear best suited to help close gaps between existing and desired analytic capability, but additional research is needed to develop and refine such techniques.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) launched the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program to award predisaster mitigation grants. FEMA asked the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) to develop metrics—quantitative measurements of important concepts—that can inform decisionmaking for the BRIC program. Building from discussions with program leadership, a review of stakeholder comments, and a close reading of BRIC's legal requirements, the authors established three lines of effort (LoEs) for analysis. The indirect benefits line reviewed published measurement techniques and blended them into instructions for an input-output simulation model that better measures the full benefit to a community of mitigating an asset. The applicant institutional capability (AIC) line reviewed analogous research and interviewed subject-matter experts to develop a checklist for assessing the ability of applicants to propose or execute mitigation projects, focusing on staff retention, skills, and experience, as well as management capacity and technical capacity. The community resilience line developed an assessment framework based on BRIC's legal requirements, discussions with BRIC leadership, and standard best practices in measurement. Then, the LoE conducted a preliminary review of published resilience metrics, highlighting the potential value of action-based community resilience metrics for performance evaluation, population-based metrics for equity evaluation, and building code–based metrics as needed to improve statutory compliance. Each LoE produced a metric or framework for assessing metrics that could support BRIC grant decisionmaking and program performance evaluation. The report concludes with 11 recommendations for FEMA to consider.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Getting early indication of potential contractor performance risks and contract execution issues is critical for proactive acquisition management. When contractors are in danger of not meeting contractual performance goals, Department of the Air Force (DAF) acquisition management may not be fully aware of the shortfall until, for example, a schedule deadline is missed, government testing indicates poor system's technical performance, or costs exceed expectations. Concerns continue to be raised about cost and schedule growth in acquisition and experts postulate about a lack of knowledge about the status of acquisition programs. In this report, the authors focus on metrics to identify emerging execution problems earlier than traditional acquisition oversight systems to enable more-proactive risk and performance management. They summarize their findings, which include a taxonomy of contractor relative risks, leading indicators of performance, relevant data sources, risk measures and equations, and a prototype that implements some of these findings using real data sources. This research should be of interest to acquisition professionals and leadership who are searching for ways to improve acquisition performance through early identification of potential relative contractor risks and execution problems to inform active program management and mitigation of risks. The prototype should be of interest to acquisition officials (from program managers to milestone decision authorities) to help them access more data in an easy-to-understand way so they can focus their limited time on areas that require increased management attention. This approach should be useful during any phase of the acquisition process.

Government contractors --- Evaluation. --- Management. --- United States.