Defense Depot Maintenance

Information on Public and Private Sector Workload Allocations Gao ID: NSIAD-98-41 January 20, 1998

This report reviews the Defense Department's (DOD) guidelines and procedures for identifying depot maintenance workloads and quantifying the public and private sectors' share of depot maintenance funding. GAO (1) summarizes public and private workload distributions as reported by the military for fiscal years 1996 through 2002 and (2) analyzes the procedures DOD uses to define and quantify depot workload distribution.

GAO noted that: (1) DOD's May 1997 report of public- and private-sector depot maintenance workload distribution for FY 1996 through 2002 did not provide a complete, consistent, and accurate assessment of DOD's public- and private-sector funding; (2) vague Office of the Secretary of Defense guidance and incomplete and inconsistent reporting of data by the military departments and defense agencies contributed to this condition; (3) the workload distribution analysis showed that in FY 1996 DOD spent $7.1 billion for work assigned to public-sector facilities and about $3.4 billion for work assigned to the private sector; (4) in addition, DOD's analysis shows that DOD provided an additional $706 million for depot maintenance-related work acquired from the private sector through interim contractor support and contractor logistics support arrangements; and (5) DOD's depot maintenance workload distribution and supporting data show that: (a) in some cases modification and conversion work obtained from private-sector contractors was not reported but similar work in public depots was included; (b) reporting of computer software maintenance work was inconsistent and perhaps incomplete; (c) public-sector depot maintenance funding included substantial expenditures for goods and services purchased from private-sector contractors, and resulted in inconsistent reporting of the allocation between the public and private sector; and (d) depot maintenance expenditures for equipment and software owned by various defense agencies were not reported.

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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