Defense Computers

The defense integration support tools database serves as the Defense Department's (DOD) inventory of automated information systems and is intended to be used as a tool to help DOD solve its Year 2000 problems. If the Year 2000 problem is not overcome in time, the military's computer systems could malfunction or produce incorrect information. This report discusses efforts by the Defense Information Systems Agency to address data integrity and other problems associated with the database and the prospects for completing these efforts in time to benefit the military. GAO raises several concerns and makes recommendations that, if implemented, should alleviate them.

GAO noted that: (1) a critical step in solving the year 2000 problem is to conduct an enterprisewide inventory of information systems for each business area to establish the necessary foundation for year 2000 program planning; (2) a thorough inventory also ensures that all systems are identified and linked to a specific business area or process, and that all enterprisewide cross-boundary systems are considered; (3) in addition, the inventory can play a critical role in the later stages of year 2000 correction; (4) for DOD, this inventory is particularly important given the tens of thousands of systems and the many interfaces between systems owned by the services and DOD agencies and considering that these systems vary widely in their importance in carrying out DOD missions; (5) in such a complex system environment, the inventory helps facilitate information technology resource and trade-off decisions; (6) the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (ASD/C3I) and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) have recognized that, at present, DIST, the Department's enterprisewide inventory, is not a reliable and accurate tool for managing DOD's year 2000 effort; (7) as a result, the Office of the ASD/C3I and DISA have initiated efforts to: (a) improve the integrity of DIST inventory information; (b) facilitate access to information within the database; and (c) ensure that services and components input information needed to complete the inventory; (8) however, given the pace at which these efforts have been proceeding, GAO does not believe that DIST will be usable and reliable in time to have a beneficial impact on year 2000 correction efforts; (9) without a complete inventory, the Department as a whole cannot adequately assess departmentwide progress toward correcting the year 2000 problem and address crosscutting issues--such as whether system interfaces are being properly handled and whether there is a need for additional testing facilities; and (10) thus, the Office of the ASD/C3I and DISA need to expedite efforts to complete the DIST inventory before substantial renovation efforts begin in the services and components, and ensure that the information in DIST is accurate, complete, reliable, and usable.

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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