Defense IRM

In 1989, the Defense Department (DOD) began its Corporation Information Management (CIM) initiative in an attempt to save billions of dollars by streamlining operations and by deploying standard information systems to support common business operations. Eight years later, however, DOD has not realized the expected level of savings because it has not fully implemented sound management practices to carry out this initiative. GAO placed CIM on its list of government programs at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. (See GAO/HR-97-9, Feb. 1997.) A key part of CIM is DOD's migration effort, which involves replacing its functionally duplicative and inefficient automated information systems with the best existing systems. DOD believes that migration can cut costs associated with developing and maintaining disparate systems supporting the same functions. It also believes that migration, if done properly, can help standardize business processes. This report (1) provides information on the number and cost of systems designated for migration, the number of legacy systems already terminated or scheduled for termination, and savings arising from terminations of legacy systems and (2) determines whether DOD's management control and oversight processes for migration are ensuring that investments are economically sound and comply with its technical and data standards.

GAO noted that: (1) from fiscal years 1995 through 2000, DOD plans to spend at least $18 billion on migration; (2) DOD has selected 363 migration systems and has targeted 1,938 legacy systems for potential termination; (3) despite this substantial investment, DOD did not adhere to decisionmaking and oversight processes it established to ensure that the economical and technical risks associated with migration projects have been mitigated; (4) DOD's primary corporate-level control mechanism for ensuring that sound management and development practices were followed for each migration investment has not been effective; (5) DOD does not have assurance that the migration systems being developed will help achieve its technology goals and that sound business decisions were made in selecting the systems; (6) DOD's traditional acquisition oversight processes also did not support the migration effort because they have not fully ensured that economic analyses for migration projects are prepared and reviewed and that the systems comply with technical and data standards; (7) had there been more rigorous attention to established oversight procedures and sound business practices, DOD might well have avoided the migration problems GAO identified in previous reviews, which unnecessarily cost it hundreds of millions of dollars; (8) in implementing the migration strategy, DOD did not ensure that it had adequate departmentwide visibility over status, costs, and progress; (9) as a result, it could not provide accurate and reliable information, as requested, on the number and cost of systems designated for migration, and the numbers of systems terminated and scheduled to be terminated; (10) DOD has not been able to convincingly demonstrate whether the migration strategy has been successful, and it has not been able to provide the Congress with accurate and reliable information needed for decisionmaking purposes; (11) DOD has taken a positive step to turn around its information technology investment process as part of its implementation of the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996; (12) the Secretary of Defense outlined his expectations for improvements in management processes and information resources related to information technology; and (13) these expectations incorporate some of the most important elements of the Clinger-Cohen Act and are an excellent starting point for bringing meaningful change to the current information technology management process.

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.

Director: Team: Phone: