page_title: Robert O. Work
section_title: Deputy Secretary of Defense
hierarchical_section_title: Robert O. Work / Civilian career / Deputy Secretary of Defense
context_page_description: Robert Orton Work is an American national security professional who served as the 32nd United States Deputy Secretary of Defense for both the Obama and Trump administrations from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, Work was the United States Under Secretary of the Navy from 2009 to 2013, and before that served as a colonel in the United States Marine Corps; Work retired in 2001 and worked as a civilian at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and the George Washington University in various positions relating to military and strategic study. From 2013 to 2014, he was the CEO of the Center for a New American Security.
context_section_description: On February 7, 2014, President Obama nominated Work to become Deputy Secretary of Defense.
  In October 2014, Deputy Secretary Work instructed the Defense Business Board to hire consultants from McKinsey & Company to identify wasteful spending.  McKinsey discovered DoD was spending $134 billion, 23% of its total budget, on back-office work, and that the back-office bureaucracy staff of over one million people was nearly as great as the number of active duty troops.  On January 22, 2015, the board then voted to recommend adoption of McKinsey's five-year plan to cut $125 billion in waste.
  However, after Secretary Chuck Hagel was replaced by Ash Carter the next month, Deputy Secretary Work expressed his concerns that any gain from savings achieved would then be removed from the defense budget by Congress.  Under Secretary Frank Kendall III argued that he could not achieve any efficiencies and, instead, that he needed to hire 1,000 more staff.  Secretary Carter then replaced the board chairman, classified the McKinsey results as secret, and removed the report from public websites.
  When James Mattis became defense secretary in January 2017, he asked Work to remain as deputy in order to complete several tasks, including preparing an amendment for additional funding in fiscal year 2017 and preparing the fiscal year 2018 budget for submittal in May 2017. This may have marked the first time in history when the top three posts at the Pentagon – secretary, deputy secretary, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs – were held by Marines.
caption: Flag of the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense