The Department of Defense (DoD) is beginning a new effort to update and improve management practices.
On Jan. 31, DoD unveiled the Defense Management Institute (DMI), a non-profit and non-partisan research organization committed to enhancing the department’s management, organization, performance improvement, and enterprise business operations.
“The [DoD] is the world’s largest and most complex institution, with a budget of more than $800 billion and a workforce of [three] million operating 24 hours a day in every time zone around the globe,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, during the DMI inaugural event. “We owe it to the taxpayers to ensure [we manage their resources] as efficiently and effectively as possible.”
The DMI will contribute to that effort by developing a defense management network of expertise and a community of practice, including experts and practitioners from Federally funded research and development centers, think tanks, academia, and the private sector.
DMI efforts will also support DoD’s new Strategic Management Plan, keeping it aligned with the National Defense Strategy.
In addition, the DMI will conduct cutting-edge research on management issues to inform decisions by the department and Congress. It will also build a digital repository of resources on key defense management issues that the entire community can leverage.
“Defense reform has been a key enabler to my efforts to support Secretary Austin’s three priorities of defending the nation, taking care of our people, and succeeding through teamwork,” said Hicks. “I’m counting on DMI and the broader defense community to help ensure progress will only accelerate in the years to come. It truly is a national security imperative.”
The DMI will be run under the auspices of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a non-profit research center in Alexandria, Va., that partners with DoD on several research centers.
