Defense Computers

If the military does not resolve its Year 2000 computer problem in time, computer systems at the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which supplies the military with supply, technical, logistics, and contract services, could malfunction or produce incorrect information. The impact of these failures could be widespread, costly, and debilitating to important logistics functions. This report discusses (1) the status of DLA's efforts to correct its Year 2000 problems and (2) the appropriateness of DLA's strategies and actions for ensuring that the problem will be successfully addressed.

GAO noted that: (1) DLA has recognized that the Year 2000 problem has the potential to be the largest information technology dilemma it has encountered to date and that if not successfully resolved, the supply, technical, logistics, and contract services that DLA provides to the military services could be severely disrupted; (2) to its credit, DLA has already: (a) assessed the Year 2000 impact on its operations; (b) inventoried its systems; (c) conducted pilot projects to determine Year 2000 effects on some of its major systems; and (d) developed and issued policies, guidelines, standards, and recommendations on Year 2000 correction for the agency; (3) these steps are consistent with GAO's guidelines and the Department of Defense's (DOD) five-phase approach for planning, managing, and evaluating Year 2000 programs; (4) however, DLA has not yet completed several critical steps associated with the assessment phase of Year 2000 correction that are designed to ensure the agency is well-positioned to deal with delays or other problems encountered in the remaining phases; (5) DLA has not been working enough with its customers and others who have established system connections or interfaces to ensure consistency in handling date information passed between systems; (6) the agency has not included thousands of field-developed, unique programs as part of its Year 2000 systems inventory or made these programs part of its Year 2000 program office's responsibility; (7) these unique programs can introduce errors into DLA's automated information systems just as easily as those systems that have external interfaces with DLA systems; (8) in addressing these two issues, DLA can help ensure the success of its efforts to correct the systems within its control; (9) DLA has not: (a) prioritized the 86 automated information systems that it plans on being operational in the year 2000 to ensure that the most mission critical systems are corrected first; or (b) developed contingency plans to establish the course of action that should be followed in the event that any of DLA's mission critical systems are not corrected on time; and (10) since DLA activities are critical to supporting military operations and readiness, GAO believes that the agency should begin prioritizing its systems and developing contingency plans so that logistics operations can continue even if unforeseen problems or delays in Year 2000 corrective actions arise.

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: