[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 142 (Tuesday, October 21, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10899-S10900]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                   TRIBUTE TO MR. R. NOEL LONGUEMARE

 Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the 
professionalism, dedication, vision, and public service of Mr. R. Noel 
Longuemare, who is retiring from the Department of Defense [DOD] after 
serving 4 years as the Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for 
Acquisition and Technology, and most recently as the Acting Under 
Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology.
  Mr. Longuemare's tireless support for improved acquisition management 
practices, work force empowerment, and reduced life cycle support costs 
dramatically improved the DOD's acquisition management. He was 
instrumental in establishing Integrated Product Teams [IPT's] in all 
acquisition decisionmaking activities within the acquisition community. 
As the acquisition work force has been significantly reduced, IPT's 
have enabled commands to focus their expertise and to empower their 
managers in ways unmatched by traditional, functionally aligned 
organizations. Through his emphasis on IPT's, he has generated a 
climate of cooperative problem solving between industry and its DOD 
customers.
  Along with IPT's, Mr. Longuemare led the efforts to redefine the ways 
in which DOD specifies the products it acquires. He was the driving 
force in the shift to performance specifications for complex defense 
articles. Through his

[[Page S10900]]

emphasis on what new systems should do rather than how they should 
look, industry has enjoyed unparalleled opportunities to bring 
technical creativity to bear on the most complex requirements. Mr. 
Longuemare successfully ushered the reform of military specifications 
and standards. In fact, nearly 2,700 specifications and standards have 
been rescinded as formal acquisition requirements since the program's 
inception. Thus, barriers to industry's own rate of technology 
acceleration have eroded, and industry continues to improve the way 
they do business with the Department of Defense.
  In addition to his leadership through difficult institutional 
changes, Mr. Longuemare personally pioneered many innovative 
acquisition concepts such as cost as an independent variable [CAIV] and 
the single process initiative [SPI]. CAIV provides program managers and 
engineers a practical method for treating cost as a true systems design 
criterion, and it directly supports the DOD transition to performance 
specifications. The SPI approach, which replaces separate Government 
and commercial processes, is one of the most powerful techniques 
available for reducing overhead and accelerating process proficiency.
  Mr. Longuemare has been a champion within the DOD for more effective 
communications. He initiated a systems engineering directorate to 
better define this crucial, but often elusive, discipline within the 
acquisition system. He advocated continuing education for the 
acquisition work force and fostered significantly improved coordination 
between the military departments, particularly in the requirements 
definition process.
  Mr. President, the work of this exceptional public servant will 
continue to have a lasting impact on the DOD for many years to come. 
Mr. Longuemare has rightly earned the highest respect of all who know 
him in Congress, the DOD, and private industry. I ask my colleagues to 
join me in extending the Senate's best wishes to Noel, his wife Julie, 
and their daughter Maria.

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