Fourth Estate (Department of Defense)
The Fourth Estate is a jargon term for the portions of the United States Department of Defense that are not the military Services or Intelligence Community agencies including:
- the Office of the Secretary of Defense
- the Defense Acquisition University
- the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA)
- the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA)
- the Defense Health Agency (DHA)
- the Defense Human Resources Activity
- the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)[lower-alpha 1]
- the Defense Legal Services Agency
- the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA)
- the Defense Media Activity (DMA)
- the Defense Technology Security Administration
- the Missile Defense Agency (MDA)
- the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA)
- the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
- the Office of Economic Adjustment.
Fourth Estate entities are all organizational entities in DoD that are not in the military departments, IC agencies, or combatant commands. These include the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Office of the Inspector General of DoD, the defense agencies, and DoD field activities.
They are organized under Washington Headquarters Services.[2] Together they consumed 18% of the Department of Defense budget in 2018.[1]
Footnotes
- The first member of the Fourth Estate, created in 1960[1]
References
- Mark Cancian (May 25, 2018), Why Chairman Thornberry failed to tame DOD's fourth estate, breakingdefense.com
- Human Capital: DOD Needs Better Internal Controls and Visibility over Costs for Implementing Its National Security Personnel System, Government Accounting Office report number GAO-07-851, July 2007