How do I respond to Whitneys post and ask a question:

Good evening, Class, and Professor,

Three Sub-Categories of the National Defense Budget and Their Relation to the Acquisition Process

In Federal Government speak, sub-categories are referred to as appropriations title and those represent the major sections or divisions of the national defense budget. The full list of appropriations titles includes:

Military personnel

Operation and Maintenance (O&M)

Procurement

Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E)

Military Construction

Family Housing

Revolving and Management Funds

Of all seven categories,three account for 95% of the defense budget. These are O&M, procurement, and RDT&E (Brown, 2010, p. 20). These three sub-categories relate to the acquisition process by funding the day-to-day activities of the military, acquiring new equipment, and supporting research and development efforts.

A real-life example of this can be drawn from a prior RDT&E project that I had the opportunity to lead. Several years ago, in a wave of "additional" congressional funding in the amount of $20M, multiple RDT&E projects were funded. One of these projects was given to me to lead, with a budget of $3M over a 12-month period with no option for extension. The project developed an automated software development kit prototype that ended up getting an additional year of funding and is now into sustainment and used regularly to aid the development process. This directly impacts the acquisition process by reducing the total cost of development of new applications, enabling monies to be allocated elsewhere, positively influencing the schedule of outlays. An interestingfactoris how this can be distantly connected to estimates that are reviewed by the Office and Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) (Brown, 2010, p. 13). Additionally, since all DHA and DoD programs fall into a line of command routing up to the Secretary of Defense, and then to the President, any Executive Orders (EO's) or Congressional Funds directly impact the defense acquisition process, and the existing programs therein.

The Difference Between Unobligated and Unexpended Funds and Their Role in The Defense Budget Process

Unobligated and unexpended funds can be a tongue twister that is easily confusing. An easy way to remember which one comes first (important for understanding the overall process these funds are involved in) is that the words "unobligated funds" begins with "uno" which is "one" in Spanish.These are budget authority funds that are approved by Congress for specific programs (usually referred to as "Task Orders" in contracts), but have not been obligated (Brown, 2010, p. 14). As a refresher, budget authority simply refers to the authority granted by Congress to the DoD or other government agencies to carry out activities necessary to fulfill the work. An obligation happens when a contract is signed, purchase orders are sent, or any other action that constitutes a financial commitment have occurred; an outlay has been paid.

Unexpended funds, however, are both unobligated and obligated funds that have not been paid/the outlay has not occurred. To help visualize this process and the concepts behind it, I created a workflow pictured below. This is based on Brown's (2010) information on these topic areas.

These types of funds and the process to support them are germane to the acquisition process in that trend analysis of spending for them can indicate issues with programs that may result in reduced funding. Therefore, it is important that programs do well to maximize their budget on contract work that brings value to the organization.

References

Brown, B. (2010, August). Introduction to Defense Acquisition Management. Defense

Acquisition University.https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA606328/mode/2up

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-Whitney