A major step in reforming the Pentagon's outdated budget system

Early in 2001, shortly after I had been nominated to be the Department of Defense comptroller in the new George W. Bush administration, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara asked me if the department was still operating under the PPB (Planning, Programming, Budgeting) system. When I replied in the affirmative, he was taken aback. "But I brought that in 40 years ago," he exclaimed. Nearly a quarter-century since that conversation, the Defense Department continues to employ the same system, with very few changes since McNamara installed it. Even the addition of "Execution" — which I mandated in 2003 in order to…