NEWS RELEASE

August 15, 2023

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform is pleased to release its Interim Report, which reflects the Commission’s commitment to ensuring the Department of Defense (DoD) PPBE processes maintain the United States military’s ability to deter and, if necessary, win any fight against any adversary.

The Interim Report includes research requirements that Congress identified in Section 1004 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, 10 potential recommendations requiring additional DoD and Congressional stakeholder feedback to inform the Commission’s Final Report, and 13 actions that Congress and DoD can act on now to improve the PPBE process.

The Honorable Robert Hale, Commission Chair, highlighted key elements from the detailed report: “The Commission has concluded that, while the current PPBE process has significant strengths, it can be improved. Most needed are improvements that foster innovation and better alignment of strategies to budgets.”

Based on extensive research and interviews, and the expertise of its Commissioners and staff, the Interim Report is structured around five lines of effort. The five focus areas include: improving PPBE-related relationships between the DoD and Congress; enabling PPBE processes to implement innovation and adaptability at the speed of relevance; aligning budgets to strategy; digitizing PPBE business systems and employing data analytics; and improving the capability of the PPBE programming and budgeting workforce. The Commission agreed that these goals are most critical to achieving impactful PPBE reform.

The Honorable Ellen Lord, Commission Vice Chair, emphasized that the warfighter is the key focus of the Commission’s work: “The DoD needs a resourcing structure that is innovative and adaptable enough to field cutting edge capabilities to the warfighter quickly while maintaining congressional oversight. Our Interim Report reflects these priorities, and we are confident we will have additional recommendations for meaningful reform in our Final Report.”

The Commission is moving forward with additional stakeholder engagement and research to inform its Final Report, due March 2024.

You can read the Interim Report here.

A two-page summary of the Interim Report is here.

For press inquiries or questions, please contact PPBE_Reform@ppbe.senate.gov.