Computer Procurement

GAO reviewed the Navy's plans for a $22.1-million upgrade to its Uniform Inventory Control Point System (UICP), focusing on the: (1) data the Navy used to justify the upgrade; and (2) Navy's thoroughness in evaluating ways to improve the performance of its existing UICP resources. UICP supports inventory management functions for the Navy Aviation Supply Office (ASO) and the Navy Ship Parts Control Center (SPCC).

GAO found that: (1) the Navy UICP project office estimated that it would need to double its processing capacity by 1991 and increase ASO and SPCC storage capability by 27 percent and 48 percent, respectively; (2) the estimates overstated growth projections by inappropriately aggregating work-load estimates, ignoring distinctions between usage volume at various times of the day, using incomplete applications design data, and failing to consider recent capacity enhancements; (3) the UICP software development schedule slipped by 17 months, for which the Navy failed to account in its growth estimates; (4) revised work-load estimates double-counted the work-load increase associated with use of a new query language and were not supported by actual work-load trends; and (5) the Navy could improve its use of existing resources by rescheduling some processing work, moving some applications to other computers, reducing processing time for system management applications, modifying system processing priorities, and improving the UICP job entry system.

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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