Select Acquisition Reform Provisions in the House and Senate Versions of the FY2018 National Defense Authorization Act

Abstract

Since the 114th Congress, the Armed Services Committees have worked to reform the Department of Defense's acquisition processes. This focus continues in each committee's reported version of the FY2018 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 2810 and S. 1519). Congress has increased the volume of acquisition reform provisions enacted in recent years. In the FY2017 bill, Congress enacted 88 provisions in Title VIII, Acquisition Policy, Acquisition Management, and Related Matters (See Figure 1). That number of provisions was four times greater than the average number of Title VIII provisions in the last 25 years. The FY2017 act itself continued a trend started by the FY2016 enacted bill, which had 77 provisions in Title VIII, the most since the FY2008 act, which had 60 provisions.