Barriers

At the first R-TOC Forum he attended, in July 2001, Mike Wynne, the Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (AT&L) asked the R-TOC Pilot Programs and other participants in R-TOC to identify the "Top 5 Barriers" to implementation of R-TOC. Over 60 inputs were received and compiled, and the consensus top 5 barriers were:

• Color/year of money requirements (annual funding, limits on appropriations categories, reprogramming restrictions and thresholds, etc.)
• Inadequate processes/tools to perform tradeoffs and measure savings
• Lack of program capital fund/seed money
• No guarantee that saved dollars will be used for the program that saved the dollars (need for savings reinvestment)
• Limited PM control of program life cycle funding (including sustaining engineering).

Follow-Up Actions

Follow-up actions have been taken to address most of the barriers identified by the R-TOC Pilots. At its meeting on 3 December 2001, OSD's Business Initiatives Council (BIC) endorsed a number of initiatives related to funding flexibility, including raising reprogramming thresholds, increasing flexibility of expired funds, and establishing closeout flexibility for O&M funds. (At the same meeting, the BIC also endorsed a request to exempt DoD programs from Federal excise taxes on wheeled vehicles. Although this concern did not make the "top 5" barriers list, it was a frequently mentioned as a major concern by the MTVR pilot program.)

The BIC has also endorsed the concept that business reform "savings will be retained by the Services for their reallocation," which addresses Barrier #4.

OSD addressed concerns about R-TOC seed funds by developing an R-TOC Program Budget Decision (PBD) to provide additional funds for R-TOC investments, starting in FY03. [click here] The terms of this PBD also provide for savings retention and reinvestment.