PPBE in Comparative Organizations: Case Studies of U.S. Competitors

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) System was originally developed in the 1960s as a structured approach for planning long-term resource development, assessing program cost-effectiveness, and aligning resources to strategies. Yet changes to the strategic environment, the industrial base, and the nature of military capabilities have raised the question of whether existing U.S. defense budgeting processes remain well aligned with national security needs. The U.S. Congress called for the establishment of a commission on PPBE reform. As part of its data collection efforts, the commission asked RAND to conduct case studies of budgeting processes across sixteen comparative organizations: ten international defense organizations and six U.S. federal government agencies. In this paper, RAND researchers conduct case studies of the defense budgeting processes of China and Russia. Within data availability constraints, researchers conducted extensive document reviews and, to the extent possible, structured discussions with subject-matter experts with knowledge of internal decision-making processes and governance structures for each case study. Each case study was assigned a unique team with appropriate regional, language, or organizational expertise. The analysis was also supplemented by experts in the U.S. PPBE process.