An Evaluation of the Suitability of Air Force Operations and Maintenance Funding For Use in a Nomothetic Model

The Department of Defense's Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution process provides the foundation for integrating mission requirements with limited resources. However, in doing so, it places a significant burden on financial management professionals frequently requiring that critical, skilled resources be occupied with creating documentation rather than in accomplishing higher level analysis. It is possible that models could be used within the PPBE process to streamline the work done to provide estimates of needed resources. However, such a model would be valid only if it could be proved that the data used within the model was suitable for such purposes. A nomothetic model could potentially be the modeling framework but only if the source data met the model's three criteria.