Federal Catalog System

Continuing Item Identification Problems Gao ID: NSIAD-88-121 May 5, 1988

In response to a congressional request, GAO assessed the nature and extent of deficiencies in the Department of Defense's (DOD) Federal Catalog System.

GAO found that: (1) the system fell short of its mandate of ensuring unique identifiers for federal supply items; (2) 30 percent of all cataloged items did not have approved names, while another 29 percent lacked descriptive data; (3) numerous items were misclassified or assigned duplicate numbers; (4) improper identification of supply sources in the cataloging systems could inhibit competitive procurement; and (5) using a Defense Logistics Services Center (DLSC) cost estimate, it would cost about $14.1 million to maintain inventory records of 3,800 duplicate items, not including the price of the duplicates.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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