How do DLA’s core strengths align the agency with Defense Department priorities?
When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued his first communication to the workforce and established three key priorities – rebuilding the military, restoring the warrior ethos and reestablishing deterrence – DLA started looking at how our strategy and imperatives lined up with those goals. Our analysis showed a strong alignment. The agency’s Strategic Plan, “DLA Transforms: A Call to Action,” strengthens the focus on our mission as a logistics combat support agency and meshes well with new DOD priorities.
When I think about rebuilding our military, we’re certainly in the business of ensuring warfighter readiness support as we posture our capabilities, materials and people, and build partnerships with our industrial base. We also have people embedded with the joint force and combatant commands to work with operational planners. So new departmental goals don’t point to an existential question for DLA. Instead, they make it even more important for us to stay on target with our strategy and elevate awareness of the things we do and new ways we can provide support that ensures success of the National Defense Strategy. That awareness extends beyond our agency and workforce to industry, our new leadership in the Pentagon and to Congress.
“A future fight will be very different from what we dealt with during the 2000s and 2010s, so we’ve got to change how we do some things.”
Brad Bunn
Part of the value that we bring to the department lies in our understanding of warfighter needs and the operational environment as we foster relationships with the military services and industry to ensure efficient procurement strategies. It’s not just delivering items like Amazon delivers orders to your house. We ensure the entire supply chain is resilient and can manage through surge requirements or challenges associated with a potential conflict. That kind of valuable work and contribution can’t be outsourced; it’s an inherently governmental and warfighting function, and as a combat support agency, we’re accountable to the chairman, the secretary and the combatant commands.
There can be uncertainty about potential changes any time we have a new administration or leadership, but it’s critical we remain focused on our role as an executing arm of the department. We must be agile, responsive and adaptable as outlined in our strategy and imperatives. It’s somewhat of a test of the principles we aim to embody as we transform.
How is DLA approaching the need to be more efficient?
We continue to be deliberate by reviewing our imperatives and prioritization, considering what it might mean if we’re asked to reduce the size of the agency or need to accelerate our strategic goals even more. What’s non-negotiable is our core mission: delivering world-class material support and services to the warfighters.
One way we can increase our efficiency is to expand our use of automation in acquisition and procurement processes, especially in terms of planning and demand forecasting, which are often manual and labor intensive. We often highlight the fact that over 90% of our 10,000 daily contract award actions are automated and happen seamlessly. Now we’re asking ourselves how we can expand that further, possibly leveraging artificial intelligence to increase efficiency. There can also be challenges in balancing standardized, audit-ready processes with the need for speed and agility, but new technology can help us optimize in these areas. We’re doing it now in storage and distribution with the new Warehouse Management System, which enables process standardization, material visibility and auditability while integrating robotics to modernize physical material management functions, similar to practices in commercial industry.
Organizationally, we’re also looking at our structure and resources for opportunities to better balance efficiency with effectiveness. Our financial and business model, which is the Defense Working Capital Fund, pushes us to be very transparent about our costs because we essentially pass those costs on to our warfighting partners and the services through our rates. Therefore, we’re always in some mode of looking for ways to be better, faster, cheaper and smarter in how we do things; that’s natural to us. Most of the dollars that flow through this agency are for buying the commodities, materials and capabilities that we deliver to our customers. The rest is for people, facilities, information technology and infrastructure. Even though we have a good track record of justifying our costs, this is an opportunity for us to find ways to be more efficient and explore new approaches to how we operate. We’ll continue doing that as we always have.
What are some new areas we are exploring for improvement and growth?
We’ve made strides across all our Strategic Plan imperatives – people, posture, precision and partnerships, or the four P’s as we like to call them. Each one is a key driver for change. However, during governance forums where we discuss progress, we’ve also identified areas for improvement, such as reducing duplication across objectives and project plans.
One major emerging focus is documenting and optimizing our supply chain strategies. We have strategies for buying things and performing services, but they’re somewhat stove-piped based on how we’ve organized the agency with our major subordinate commands. In many ways, our strategies have also been inherited over decades and are based on the great work we’ve done in the past in buying and positioning material like food, fuel or repair parts for weapons systems across the globe. We’re now building a common framework that forces us to document and formalize all these supply chain strategies. This new framework will guide us toward a more cohesive, future-oriented supply chain strategy. That will include validating what’s working and reassessing what might need to change, especially in light of potential future conflicts. In a contested logistics environment, for example, our current strategies may not suffice. We need to build resilience that can deter adversaries, ensuring that we’re capable of managing through a protracted conflict if necessary. The effort hasn’t reached every nook and cranny of DLA yet, but it’s eye-opening to look closely at whether the strategies we’ve been using will work if, God forbid, we enter a conflict in the Indo-Pacific region and must support combat operations on a large scale. A future fight will be very different from what we dealt with during the 2000s and 2010s, so we’ve got to change how we do some things.
Could that result in a new Strategic Plan?
The strategy is fundamentally sound, but we may need to adjust some of the objectives and re-prioritize key results to stay on track with timely changes. Although I don’t see us issuing a new strategy, the workforce can expect annual guidance from the director that will shape how our MSCs and headquarters elements shape their annual operating plans for the next fiscal year. Given our environment and changes being driven across the federal government, the director intends to issue guidance to reinforce the strategy and express priorities for the coming fiscal year.
What actions is the agency taking to ensure full compliance with new executive orders?
Those first few days with multiple orders and directives coming out simultaneously created quite a flurry of activity, but we anticipated the need to ensure compliance and stood up a task force to review new administration directives and orders from the White House and follow-on directives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense or other authoritative sources. The chief of staff oversees the group, and a senior GS-15 runs it. Members include senior DLA Headquarters staff with the ability to reach into the major subordinate commands, and support from the legal team and DLA Transformation for policy matters.
Together, they’re taking a deliberate and disciplined approach to review everything that comes in to determine potential impact on DLA. While many of the orders and directives haven’t affected us and were well outside our realm, we’ve had some workforce and personnel issues that did pertain to us and have heavily involved our human resources team. There’ve been some workforce strategies that we’re not accustomed to, such as the Deferred Resignation Program, and we had to wait for additional guidance from OSD. The group’s overall goal though has been to document our compliance and the actions we’ve taken to comply, so we have a good record of those things.
Is there anything you would like to say to employees as they navigate new priorities and potential change?
First, we acknowledge the uncertainty in the current environment, particularly with how some other non-DOD agencies have been affected by leadership decisions prioritizing or deprioritizing certain mission areas that the federal government performs. Our federal workforce is very much impacted by those decisions. As civil servants, we’re responsible for faithfully executing the missions and tasks assigned to us. We all took that oath. Regarding concerns about the future, our role in support of the department’s priorities remains strong. The interim National Defense Strategy reaffirms our role as a combat support agency, and that’s critical to the department’s ability to execute the defense secretary’s priorities.
On a more personal level, I try to stay focused on the tasks at hand. We are still very much an indispensable part of the Joint Logistics Enterprise and the ability of the joint force to project and sustain combat power. We have countless men and women in uniform relying on us every day. We still have an important job. In addition, DLA has a strong culture of performance and mission focus, as well as a commitment to treating our people with dignity and respect. I haven’t seen anything that has caused us to not continue that. Some tough decisions may arise regarding our organizational structure, workforce investment in our people and broader government policies, but any changes will be made professionally and with respect.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
I want to credit the DLA Human Resources team, senior leaders in the MSCs and those in DLA Installation Management for their work as we’ve returned to full-time presence in the office. The initial three-days-a-week plan we executed starting in January 2024 prepared us for being back full time even though it’s been an uncomfortable transition for some. I’m glad we got that rolling start because it required us to get back into some habits that we were out of. We evaluated our office spaces and amenities to ensure they could accommodate thousands of people. During my MSC visits, I walked through offices during the heavier days to assess whether there’s enough space for everyone and whether we have any health concerns like air quality. I’ve seen lots of full parking lots and cubicle farms alive with chatter. It felt good to know that the team is back together, but I also noticed some reconfigurations of our office spaces were needed, as our telework culture dates to the late '90s. We’re still working to ensure people are in environments where they can concentrate on their work, and some renovations are happening in some of our physical spaces. But generally, when I’m out and about, I see so many personal connections being made. I’ve been approached by a few people who said they didn’t like the return to the office, but now they’re glad because they’re meeting colleagues in person. I also want to point out that our new situational telework policy provides some flexibility in balancing agency and individual needs, so that should ease some pressure.
Most importantly, I want to make sure employees understand that I truly value them whether they’re long-serving staff or new to the agency, and as the vice director, I believe DLA’s future is bright. The director often highlights that DLA’s six-plus decades of history are marked with eras of transformation. We’re in another transformative era, but we’re built to change. We’re also built to last, and that’s important for the workforce to know. Transformation may be challenging and not everyone will agree with how we approach it, but DLA is designed to endure even though we won’t always look the same.