The Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) is a principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The postholder, as chartered under United States Department of Defense Directive 5141.1 in 1996, provides independent analytic advice to the Secretary of Defense on all aspects of the Department of Defense (DoD) program, including alternative weapon systems and force structures, the development and evaluation of defense program alternatives, and the cost-effectiveness of defense systems. The office also conducts analyses and offers advice in a number of related areas, such as military medical care, school systems for military dependents, information technology, and defense economics. Consistent with its advisory role, the office has no decision authority or line responsibilities.
The Director of CAPE reports directly to the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense. As a political appointee, the Director of CAPE is an Executive Service Level IV official who is nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. He or she coordinates and exchanges information with other Office of the Secretary of Defense officials, the Heads of the DoD Components, and Federal officials having collateral or related functions.
CAPE's staff of approximately 155 people includes a combination of government civilians and military officers and is augmented by contractor support. The military officers serve in two- to three-year rotational assignments with the organization. CAPE's civilian staff is drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, including physics, economics, engineering, mathematics, biology, and computer science. The CAPE staff is recognized as among the most capable in the Pentagon.
This office was most previously known as the Office of Program Analysis & Evaluation (PA&E). However, PA&E was made defunct by the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009.
Read more about Director Of Cost Assessment And Program Evaluation: Office Holders
Famous quotes containing the words director of, director, cost, assessment, program and/or evaluation:
“When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go. You heard of that market crash in ‘29? I predicted that.... I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said; nerves, I said. Then I asked myself, “What’s General Motors got to be nervous about?” “Overproduction,” I says. “Collapse.””
—John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)
“The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“How much would it cost you to stand at the wrong end of a shooting gallery?”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, Huxley College president to con artist Baravelli (Chico Marx)
“The first year was critical to my assessment of myself as a person. It forced me to realize that, like being married, having children is not an end in itself. You don’t at last arrive at being a parent and suddenly feel satisfied and joyful. It is a constantly reopening adventure.”
—Anonymous Mother. From the Boston Women’s Health Book Collection. Quoted in The Joys of Having a Child, by Bill and Gloria Adler (1993)
“You can make as good a design out of an American turkey as a Japanese out of his native stork.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Evaluation is creation: hear it, you creators! Evaluating is itself the most valuable treasure of all that we value. It is only through evaluation that value exists: and without evaluation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creators!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)