Leaders of House and Senate Armed Services Committees have appointed former Department of Defense officials to a 14-member commission tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of DOD’s planning, programming, budgeting and execution process.
The new members of the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Reform are Eric Fanning, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association and former secretary of the Army; Robert Hale, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former DOD comptroller and chief financial officer; Raj Shah, managing partner of Shield Capital and former head of the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental; and Ellen Lord, senior adviser at The Chertoff Group and former undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, the House panel said Tuesday.
Fanning, Hale, Shah and Lord are all previous Wash100 Award recipients.
HASC Chairman Adam Smith, D-Calif., and HASC Ranking Member Mike Rogers, R-Ala., named Fanning and Shah, respectively, to the commission. SASC Chairman Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., selected Hale and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., appointed Lord to the panel.
The appointees will also help explore potential alternatives to the current PPBE process and practices and come up with policy recommendations that will enable the Pentagon to deploy operational capabilities to maintain its advantage over near-peer competitors.
In accordance with the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, the commission should submit its final report to the DOD secretary and House and Senate Armed Services panels no later than Sept. 24, 2023.