Sounds like fallout money as usual.
Posted on 07/10/2013 4:56:17 PM PDT by markomalley
Spend the money! Spend it all! Spend it now!
That’s the distinct impression created by a recent e-mail sent by Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) contracting and budget officers to their colleagues.
“Our available funding balances remain large in all appropriations — too large to spend” just on small supplemental funds often required by existing contracts, the June 27 e-mail said. DISA’s budget is $2 billion.
“It is critical in our efforts to [spend] 100% of our available resources this fiscal year,” said the e-mail from budget officer Sannadean Sims and procurement officer Kathleen Miller. “It is also imperative that your organization meets its projected spending goal for June.”
In these days of sequester and downsizing and such, that policy seems a bit out of place. (Although it could be seen as a stimulus effort.)
It also appears to contradict a September 2012 memo from the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition, Frank Kendall, and its comptroller, Robert Hale, who urged that “spending money primarily to avoid reductions in future budget[s]” is not the way to go.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sounds like fallout money as usual.
If you don’t spend it all, you don’t get as much next year.
Yes, I think every Fed dept. does the same thing, every year. Use it or lose it as they say.
If you don’t waste it this year, you won’t get it to waste the next.
Yeah, I always thought that was seriously messed up back in the day when I was on AD. Save, save, save throughout the year...then spend like a maniac from June to September (and have a MAJOR wish list when the money started falling out from on high the last couple of days of the FY)
Funny. In business, if you save costs, you get a big bonus. In government, you are penalized.
It is actually worse than “If you don’t spend it all this year, you won’t get as much next year.” In reality, if the deviation from the spend plan bad things can happen. If the deviation is too high, the program may get the ax from within the Pentagon. If the deviation is to low, the Pentagon is likely to pull funds from the program without bothering to ask why the program is spending less than planned.
What is missing from the memo is any mention of benefits achieved from the spending. Within DISA, the financial people are at the top of the pecking order, the program managers (yes, at DISA that is an oxymoron in that the Agency tends to tax Oxen that are Morons and place them in charge of programs because they tend to throw their weight around), and at the bottom of the pecking order are those people who have no direct authority to make decisions and no authority to spend money who are tasked to make things happen by informing the Moron Oxen what should be done for technical or other reasons. The Program Managers tend to ignore information they find inconvenient.
DISA is an Agency that has had many successful programs over the years and just as many spectacular failures. Almost all the successes were the result of those other than the financial and program managers efforts. The spectacular failures were often the result of a group effort of the financial, program and systems engineering managers working hard to create a huge train wreck.
If you don’t waste it this year, you won’t get it to waste the next.
Zero base budgeting.
All DoD agencies slammed on the spending brakes until they knew the effects of budget cuts and sequestration. That has all been sorted out, at least for this year and this is now the 4th quarter of the federal fiscal year. They are all scrambling to shove the money out the door. We ARE talking about the government.
Your note makes me very glad that the only interface I have with them anymore is through DITCO for my customer.
Standard government budgeting!! If you don’t spend your budgeted amount, you didn’t need it, out can’t carry it over, and it will be hard to justify an increase!!! If you spend it all, it is justification for the increase, even if the extra spending was NEEDED or NOT!!! My wife used to work is a supply squadron in the Air Force, and in September ( the last month of the fy) the supply squadron was flooded with orders, most of them were foe items that were not mission required!!!
We did it every year in the Navy. I had a list in my desk of “end of year” money wants. As soon as the memo came out so did my list. It was a great way to get the tools, and equipment we needed to do our jobs.
Why is this being posted now? It was written in 2013. DISA has a hiring freeze right now. Civilians and contractors have been told that Sr. Mgmt is cutting a little over $4 million in the coming months, a directive that came down from the Pentagon.
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