The Locker Committee called in its July report for significant reforms in the IDF’s budget. The 77-page document was dead-on-arrival. External probes like the Locker Committee are a poor substitute for rigorous internal staff work and for tough governmental decision-making.
By Dr. Yaacov Lifshitz
EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY: The Locker Committee called in its July report for significant reforms
in the IDF’s budget. The 77-page document was dead-on-arrival. External probes
like the Locker Committee are a poor substitute for rigorous internal staff
work and for tough governmental decision-making.
The IDF budget
review commission headed by Maj. Gen. (res.) Yohanan Locker, Prime Minister
Netanyahu’s former military aide, proposed “efficiency reforms” that could be
reinvested in the IDF budget totaling NIS 9.6 billion per year between 2016 and
2020, while advocating growth of the IDF budget to NIS 59 billion. The IDF
opposed the reforms, and says that it needs NIS 61-64 billion annually to cover
expensive challenges in the cyber, missile defense and precision weapons
arenas.
The lifespan
of the Locker Committee Report was extremely short, shorter even than other
reports of a similar nature; essentially dead-on-arrival. Presumably, even if
some of the report’s recommendations are revived at some state, this dismal
outcome was not what the committee’s instigators had in mind. Or perhaps was
it?
In any case,
there is certainly a question to be asked as to whether a committee of this
kind is in fact a suitable framework for examining, and making recommendations
on, issues relating to the defense budget and its composition.
The Locker
Committee Report refers to no fewer than five previous IDF budget review
committees (“main” committees, as the report puts it, to make clear that there
were others too) whose findings and recommendations have been shelved—all within
the last ten years, and all related to the defense budget. To these we can add
other committees addressing important civilian issues which have suffered a
similar fate.
Indeed, time
and again the facts show that ad-hoc committees, with members appointed from
outside rather than within the government bureaucracy, achieve nothing. This is
true no matter how respected, talented, and experienced the committee members
may be, and however accurate their analysis and logical their findings.
Veterans of
the political establishment quote Moshe Dayan as saying that David Ben-Gurion
saw committees as elegant “coffins” for topics he wanted to take off the public
agenda. He, Dayan,would only appoint a committee once he had made up his own
mind on the subject; the committee would support his view and provide
justification for his chosen policy. On the face of things, present-day
committees seem to be no different. If not exactly a way of burying the
problem, committees enable leaders to buy time, deflect pressure, and delay
complex decisions. Appointing a committee creates the appearance of something
being done, even if its recommendations are never actually implemented.
If those who
convene it have a preferred course of action, then a committee—whose members
can be chosen to ensure conformity and to lend prestige (whether deserved or
not)—can be a means for garnering support.
However, as in
the past, no one really expects committees to propose something that hasn’t
previously been considered. Leaders make use of committees for various
secondary “advantages” they confer, and not necessarily because they offer the
promise of better policy or decision making.
However, the
fate of committees is decided by more than just the hidden intentions of those
who appoint them. The large number of committees whose reports have been
archived raises the suspicion that there is something wrong with the tool
itself. Ad-hoc committees, comprising members from outside of government,
suffer from inherited deficiencies, and in many cases are simply not a suitable
framework for examining the issues under their purview and making
recommendations on them to government.
We cannot
seriously expect that a group of external individuals, whose daily work—and in
many cases, whose expertise—lies in different fields, can within a limited time
frame uncover previously unknown data, or use familiar data to create some new
perspective, or analyze an existing perspective and reach meaningful insights
that have never occurred to those involved on a day-to-day basis.
Ad-hoc
committees are entirely dependent on the raw and processed data provided by the
bureaucrats working in the field. Being introduced to this information for the
first time, committee members are readily influenced by the way in which it is
presented, which of course is not free of bias, and can be flummoxed by
contradictory data and facts about which there is no agreement. Thus when it
comes to collecting data and establishing facts, without which no evaluations,
conclusions, or recommendations can be reached, external committees have no
added value whatsoever.
The Locker
Committee Report demonstrates some of these weaknesses. In its description of
the planning process for the defense budget, and in the chapter referring to
outsourcing of tasks, for example, and elsewhere—the report presents so-called
“discoveries” which are no more than a collection of facts known for decades to
anyone familiar with the subject. Subsequently, these “discoveries” form the
basis for recommendations that, in the committee’s opinion, describe a new
path, whereas in fact the majority of them have been on the agenda at some
stage or another in the past. For the committee members this all may well have
been news, perhaps even surprising news, because their previous acquaintance
with the issues was superficial.
The
inferiority of the external committee is also evident in another context. The
internal staff work shared by all those involved in a particular field creates
a dynamic that helps reduce disagreement and bridge gaps. In order to function,
consensus must eventually be reached. External committees, on the other hand,
create the opposite dynamic. They offer a platform for the strident
presentation of opposing views, and encourage the various sides to entrench
themselves in opposition to one another. Thus internal decision-making and work
processes have a better chance of formulating paths of action that are more
feasible politically and bureaucratically, while external committees result in
recommendations that are difficult to implement.
Ad-hoc
committees of external members are also misaligned with the principle of
matching authority and responsibility. External committee members, who
doubtless have the best of intentions, bear no responsibility for implementing
the recommendation, or for the outcomes that may result. This fundamental fact
can influence the committee’s conclusions and recommendations.
With the same
factual foundations, the conclusions and recommendations of one who has no
responsibility for implementation and results will be different from those of
one who does carry that responsibility. This is similar to the concept of
“moral hazard” familiar from other subject areas. For example, people who are
insured tend to expose themselves to risks that those who are uninsured will
avoid. In our context, this is not necessarily about recommendations that
present greater risk, but mainly about proposals that have a low probability of
being implemented. Or in other words—less practical proposals.
The Locker
Committee Report, for example, recommends making fundamental changes to the
involvement of the National Security Council (NSC) in defense budget planning
and oversight. The budget and work plans should not be discussed in cabinet
until they have “passed” the NSC, the Locker Report recommends; the NSC should
be required to authorized any project costing above a certain amount; and the
NSC should even be involved in approving additional personnel for IDF
units.
The practical
implication is that the defense establishment and the Ministry of Finance,
themselves hugely powerful institutions, should bring their disagreements to
the NSC, a staff function by its nature, for it to serve as mediator and
adjudicator. This is not a reasonable prospect, and thus there is little chance
of these recommendations being implemented.
The Locker
Committee also assigns great importance to the outsourcing of tasks to civilian
bodies, and rules that any non-operational task that is not part of the IDF’s
core defense activity should be outsourced immediately. The committee even
emphasizes that outsourcing should not be conditional? on the possibility of
restoring the task to the IDF at some stage in the future. This is a
far-reaching and extreme recommendation that has in the past, as it does today,
aroused immense opposition—some relevant, some less so—and one that is also
very unlikely to be implemented.
In short,
there are steps that it is possible (and perhaps necessary) to take in order to
improve the public budgeting process in general, and in particular the process
of deciding the defense budget. Appointing external committees is not among
them.
Committees are
a poor substitute for staff work and for governmental decision-making
procedures. Committees complete their task when they present their report, and
their members then move on. In this they enjoy a privilege not given to those
who then have to get the work done.
In truth, the
idea of appointing an external committee to make recommendations on the size
and composition of defense spending —with the first case, the Brodet Committee,
following the Second Lebanon War—has unclear origins. There has always been a
lack of agreement on the issue between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry
of Defense, and the issue was always decided by the prime minister and the
government, without recourse to an external committee.
When it comes
to committees designed to propose to government courses of action on civilian
matters (for example, the Trajtenberg, Elaluf, or Sheshinsky committees, among
others), there may perhaps be good reasons for including members from outside
government. These committees mainly dealt with subjects in which the
public—households and companies—are directly involved.
This is not
the case with the Locker Committee (and the Brodet Committee before it), which
was asked to settle an internal disagreement between two government
establishments. The choice between providing a reasonable response to
national security threats and allocating resources to promote socioeconomic goals
is not a simple one, but it cannot be ducked by handing the “hot potato” to a
committee. This choice is the sole responsibility of the elected political
echelon; it is a responsibility that elected representatives must take on.
About The Author:
Dr.
Yaacov Lifshitz, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for
Strategic Studies, has served as the economic advisor to Israel’s Ministry of
Defense, as director general of the Israel Ministry of Finance, and as chairman
of the board of directors of the Israel Military Industries (IMI). He is the
author of Defense Economics: The General Theory and the Israeli Case,
and teaches in the departments of economics and of public policy at Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev.
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Publication Details:
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 312
This article was first
published at BESACenter Website, October 22, 2015 and is republished on
IndraStra.com with Original Publisher's Permission. All Rights Reserved by
BESA Center.
Image Attributes: Locker Committee Report Submission / Source: Global.co.il
BESA Center
Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg
Rosshandler Family.
