DFAS Telecommunications

The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) was established in 1991 to streamline the Pentagon's finance and accounting policies, procedures, and systems. In 1994, the Defense Department announced plans to consolidate more than 300 defense accounting offices into five large finance centers and 21 new sites called operating locations. The success of this effort depends on the ability of the operating locations to obtain and process finance and accounting data from the Defense Department's many military installations. DFAS is relying on the Defense Information Systems Agency to provide the telecommunication services needed to send this critical information. This report reviews the use of 50 data communication lines that DFAS leases from the Defense Information Systems Agency to connect its operating locations and finance centers and the megacenters through one of the Defense Information Systems Agency's common user data networks.

GAO noted that: (1) GAO's analysis of the usage data for the 50 leased data communication lines indicates that 29 lines may not be utilized in the most efficient, effective, and economical manner; (2) this situation is due primarily to DFAS not performing a thorough analysis of its telecommunication requirements; (3) to meet the tight time frames prescribed for the consolidation effort, DFAS did not consider critical factors such as frequency of use, peak usage periods, and the volume of information to be transmitted and received; (4) rather, the DFAS Deputy Director for Information Management decided that a start-up line of 512 kilobits per second would provide sufficient capacity for the workload requirements of each OPLOC; (5) as the finance and accounting workload was transferred from the defense accounting offices (DAO) to the OPLOCs, operational problems, such as increased downtime and slow response times, began to surface; (6) to resolve these problems, across-the-board line and equipment upgrades were made without knowing what specific changes were needed to remedy the problem at each location; (7) with the transfer of the DAOs to the OPLOCs virtually complete, DFAS can now thoroughly reassess and revalidate its existing telecommunication lines to determine if they are effectively utilized; (8) doing so would also enable DFAS to identify opportunities for reducing its lease cost; and (9) such reassessments are important because they enable an agency to determine, based on empirical data, whether its telecommunication lines are properly sized, meet mission requirements, and are cost-effective.

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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