Cummings to function performing Pentagon acquisition head

WASHINGTON — Stacy Cummings, the performing deputy assistant secretary of protection for acquisition, will briefly fill the division’s prime acquisition workplace as soon as Joe Biden turns into president, Protection Information has realized.

Ellen Lord, the undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, will step down on Jan. 20, with Cummings filling that position till the Biden administration can put its personal Senate-confirmed particular person into the position.

Cummings is a career member of the Senior Government Service and beforehand held jobs on the Division of Transportation and the Division of the Navy. Over the summer season, Cummings led the Joint Acquisition Activity Drive, which was the Protection Division’s interagency level of contact for coping with COVID-19 procurement points.

Lord, a former head of Textron Programs, was the longest-serving Senate-confirmed particular person within the Pentagon below the Trump administration. Throughout her tenure, she managed to keep away from getting introduced into the political fights that downed so many different division appointees, as a substitute specializing in rewriting acquisition rules in an try and streamline the division’s famously arcane processes.

Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic introduced new concentrate on Lord, as her workplace rapidly turned a hub of manufacturing for much-needed items and vaccines by way of the Protection Manufacturing Act. Over the summer season, Democratic members of Congress criticized Lord’s office for utilizing cash from the Coronavirus Support, Aid and Financial Safety Act to help the protection trade.

It’s anticipated that both Dyke Weatherington, who leads the acquisition and sustainment data and integration portfolio administration workplace, or Gregory Kausner, the chief director for worldwide cooperation, will function performing assistant secretary of protection for acquisition, the No. 2 job on the acquisition and sustainment workplace at the moment held by Kevin Fahey.