A Fair Share analysis of the U.S. Coast Guard budget.

http://archive.org/details/fairshareanalysi00simpNAN

Reform of Program Budgeting in the Department of Defense

In this article we conduct a process analysis to assess evidence to test the following hypothesis: that the complicated architecture and processes of national defense planning, programming, budgeting and execution and the defense acquisition decision system lead to unintended and negative consequences for defense acquisition and procurement. The purpose of this article is to identify key points of linkage weakness or failure between Department of Defense (DOD) financial management and acquisition decision systems. We first describe the PPB system and decision process. We then provide an analysis of recent changes to PPB. Next, we describe the Defense Acquisition System (DAS) in detail. This leads us to identification of systems linkages and areas of misalignment between PPBES and the DAS, drawing on interview data. Finally, we provide conclusions with respect to our hypothesis, analysis of consequent key problems and issues, and areas that require further research

Defense Acquisition and Budgeting: Investigating the Adequacy of Linkage Between Systems

In this article we assess evidence and test the hypothesis that the complicated architecture and processes of national defense planning, programming, budgeting and execution and the defense acquisition decision system produce system linkage weaknesses that lead to unintended and negative consequences for defense acquisition and procurement. The purpose of this article is to identify key points of linkage weakness and failure between DOD financial management and acquisition decision systems, and then suggest how reengineering and realignment might be approached to resolve some of these problems. We first describe the key components of the defense planning, program, budgeting and execution system (PPBES) decision process. We then provide an analysis of recent changes to PPBES. Next, we describe the defense acquisition system (DAS) in detail. Then, relying on independent assessment of system relationships and data gathered from interviews with system participants, we identify systems linkages and areas of misalignment between the PPBES and the DAS. Finally, we provide conclusions with respect to our hypothesis and analysis of consequent key problems and issues to be addressed by top level DOD leadership

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

The Budget Enforcement Act in 1991: Isometric Budgeting

The immediate effect of the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA) of 1990 was to cancel a pending $110 billion sequester and to change the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit targets. These and other changes allowed Congress and the administration to escape responsibility for increases in the deficit if discretionary spending was kept within the caps and no new entitlement programs or revenue enhancements were added. This assumption and others relating to the empowerment of the Appropriations Committees and the new authority of the OMB are explored in this article

Budgeting and Acquisition Business Process Reform

Sponsored Report (for Acquisition Research Program)This report serves three purposes. Our first purpose is to assess the future of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution System (PPBES) and related budget reforms and to suggest that it may take more that a marginal adjustment to the current PPBES process to plan and budget most effectively for national defense and weapons acquisition. In this regard, we recommend that the DOD, and the federal government as a whole, adopt a capital budgeting process. The second purpose is to review and assess previous acquisition reforms in DOD, many of which continue into the present. The third purpose is to assess modification of the current acquisition process to improve the business processes imbedded within this system, as well as to make the overall process operate more efficiently.Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research ProgramApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Defense supplementals and the budget process

Supplemental appropriations provide emergency adjustments to the current year, usually for national defense contingencies and natural disaster emergencies. Recently, they have adopted some of the complexities of the regular appropriation process. For example, both the president and Congress may suggest when a supplemental is a dire emergency and thus beyond spending discipline and when it must be offset. Some supplementals have paid for nonemergency activities, others have resulted in funding decreases, and still others have resulted in spending in future years. Compared to the normal appropriation process, supplementals are usually passed expeditiously. Defense supplementals are generally precisely priced, whereas disaster supplementals tend to be lump sum estimates

Reform of Budgeting for Acquisition: Lessons from Private Sector Capital Budgeting for the Department of Defense

Proceedings Paper (for Acquisition Research Program)The ongoing replacement of Department of Defense (DoD) capital assets, as well as other much needed capital investments, will likely take place during a time of decreasing, or at least slowly growing financial resources over the long term. Some of this is due to the growth of entitlements, some to the size of the predicted deficit. Still another pressure is the long-term cost of military activity in Afghanistan and Iraq, predicted by CBO to be $450 billion over the next ten years. In addition, the Department of Defense is in the midst of an era of ''transformation'' under Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Donald Rumsfeld that calls for the modernization of DoD warfighting doctrine, capital goods and business systems. The budgeting system has already been modified during Rumsfeld''s tenure (McCaffery & Jones, 2004, p. 403-435). Occasionally, it has been argued that the federal government and other public agencies should adopt ''corporate'' methods of budgeting to include the use of separate capital and operating budgets that are prevalent in the private sector. In the past, this argument has not made much progress, but the current trends enumerated above move us to consider that this argument should be revisited. It is clear that significant changes would have to occur in the present system if private budgeting methods were adopted by the DoD and other public organizations, but there are examples of public organizations that have made this leap, as the governments of New Zealand and Australia, as well as most of the states in the US have at least adopted some private budgeting methods with varying degrees of success.Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research ProgramApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited