Defense Communications

The Defense Department (DOD) is now acquiring the transmission services and switching technology needed to construct its future telecommunications network known as the Defense Information System Network (DISN). DOD's strategy for the network involves acquiring and implementing DISN transmission and switching services across three regions: the continental United States, the Pacific, and Europe. These long-haul services will, in turn, interconnect DOD's base-level and deployed communications networks. This report reviews the steps DOD has taken in selecting and implementing its acquisition strategy for DISN in the continental United States, which DOD is focusing on first. GAO discusses whether (1) DOD considered other approaches, such as use of an integrated bid, in its selection of an acquisition strategy and (2) the selected acquisition strategy will yield the best value to the government over DISN's life-cycle. GAO also examines the performance measures that DOD managers are using or plan to use to objectively evaluate the outcomes and effectiveness of their DISN implementation efforts.

GAO found that: (1) DOD considered several options prior to selecting an acquisition strategy for DISN, including an approach that would have involved using a single comprehensive service provider to furnish an integrated set of services to the government and another one that involved separately acquiring component services with the government integrating those components itself; (2) DOD considered the advantages and disadvantages of each option in terms of five factors: requirements; technology enhancement; schedule; management; and cost; (3) after evaluating its options and receiving industry comments on its draft request for proposals, DOD ultimately decided on an approach that calls for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to separately acquire and integrate component services itself, using contracts awarded on a staggered schedule; (4) DOD believes that this strategy will best meet national security needs at a reasonable cost; (5) in reviewing DOD's DISN efforts in 1995, GAO reported that DOD had yet to define the program's minimal acceptable requirements; (6) GAO also reported that DOD had not yet developed an estimate of what it would cost to acquire, operate, and sustain the DISN infrastructure; (7) without this information, DOD has no objective cost and performance baseline for measuring DISN's success; (8) without this baseline, GAO cannot determine whether the selected acquisition strategy will yield the best value to the government over the course of DISN's life cycle, which is estimated to be over 10 years; (9) once this baseline is developed, DOD must also establish effective measures for tracking DISN's progress; (10) at present, DOD is far from meeting federal requirements for establishing performance measures; and (11) by developing measures that focus on benefits, costs, and risks, DOD management can target problem areas, highlight successes, and ensure DISN meets its cost and performance goals.

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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