Tenaglia meets with attendees of the Senior Acquisition Management Course (ACQ 404) May 12, 2025, at DAU (now the Warfighting Acquisition University). Source: Photo by Michael Bubar-Krukowski
of a death-by-a-thousand-cuts type of burden that we’ve imposed, not only on our own workforce but on industry. And so, we’re looking for any opportunities to reduce that. And to the extent we can demonstrate a direct relation- ship between the work that we’re doing and any improve- ments—that will take some time. We’ll need to have these new requirements finalized and applied to live acquisitions so that we can prove to ourselves that we achieved that objective. Mr. Duffey’s open letter to industry made those points—that’s what this is all about—and at least for the DoW, the work we’re doing is centered around delivering capability to the Warfighter in a more timely, cost-effective manner. Q Is there anything else that you would like to discuss, or some particular message you would like to leave to the warfighting acquisition workforce or to our university? A. Well, I appreciate the strong partnership we have with the university. I have been in this role for coming up on six years now and made a concerted effort to stay in touch, at least on a quarterly basis, with that entire faculty, particu- larly the Contract Management faculty. This has allowed us to stay connected with the students who are going through the learning process and affords an opportunity to under - stand whether our policies are effective or not. I truly ap - preciate that partnership. This is a lot for our workforce to take on, to absorb. We really need our educators at the university to help our workforce make sense of what we’re doing. At the FAR level, we are taking every opportunity we have through what you’ll see on the GSA’s acquisition.gov website. Those
changes and the use of the companion guides and the prac- titioner albums are helpful. Within the DoW, we’re going to be looking at the use of the procedures, guidance, and in- formation to ensure we’re scaling that back as appropriate. At the FAR level, what you’re seeing in my estimation is with the practitioner guide, and the companion products we’ve long had are useful guidance for our workforce. I want to encourage our workforce to embrace this opportunity. My primary message is to embrace this opportunity. As Mr. Duffey said in his open letter to industry, we’re at a significant inflection point. And I do anticipate we’ll have additional opportunities to work with the Congress to iden- tify those areas where we can further repeal existing statu- tory requirements that aren’t necessary. If we can make the case that individual requirements from existing statutes can be repealed, we’ll continue to make that through for- mal legislative change proposals that either the depart- ment or the administration offers at the OMB level for all federal contracts. We’re doing that because we recognize the need to additionally alleviate unnecessary burdens. We obviously need to continue to impose the requirements that are required by statutory provisions. This is an ongo- ing process that’s part of the responsibility my staff and I have here in [Office of the Under Secretary of War for] Acquisition and Sustainment, and we’ll continue to look for those opportunities and engage the Congress to scale back what we can. Editor’s Note: We thank Warfighting Acquisition University faculty members Kevin Linden, Dave Pearson, and Jennifer Jones for their help with this interview.
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MARCH – APRIL 2026 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION MAGAZINE 11
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