WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Carson noted that US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who entered office in February 2015, had already launched a multi-pronged effort to reform the personnel system.
“Both on the civilian side and on the military side there’s a desperate need [for change]… recognized by think tanks, by academics, by many people in this room, by junior officers.”
He explained the US military needed to learn from companies like Google and Uber to completely revolutionize its management practices.
“The time is long past due [for personnel system reform],” Carson said, especially at a time when other organizations had shown great dynamism.
Most human resources offices had evolved from a “checking the box” personnel system, but the Defense Department had never made this transition, he added.
Management practices throughout the Defense Department have been so poor, Carson explained, that senior officials could not identify the top ten percent of service members over time.
“How do we go about doing that? Can we do that today?” he asked. “The answer is we really can’t do that.”
Carson said Pentagon managers were even ignorant of the retention rate for “crucial” technical disciplines necessary for a 21st century fighting force, such as signal, cyber and engineers.
"We collect vast hordes of data about our personnel, but it’s never assimilated into a dashboard, which senior leaders can look at and say, ‘I understand where we’re trying to go, and I see the problems in it,’” he stated.
In Defense Department, he continued, the personnel system accepts waste as the cost of doing business. “We are satisfied with the gross inefficiency of not measuring our top talent, not putting them in the top jobs.”
The Defense Secretary hopes to develop the outline for a new personnel system within three months and spend the next year to 18 months putting it into practice, Carson concluded.
