Defense Inventory

Each of the military services must send Congress a schedule for implementing best commercial inventory practices for the acquisition and distribution of secondary inventory items. Best commercial practices are defined as practices that enable the Defense Department to reduce inventory levels while making the supply system more responsive to users' needs. GAO found that the Air Force's schedule, which was submitted to Congress in July 1999, is general responsive to the law's provisions. However, the schedule provides a management framework that lacks an overall strategy and specific elements needed to assess implementation progress, measure success, and identify needed changes.

GAO noted that: (1) the Air Force's schedule is generally responsive to the act; (2) it describes 17 initiatives that address the acquisition and distribution of secondary items that the Air Force manages, and with one exception, provides for implementation of these initiatives to be completed within 5 years; (3) the initiatives are aimed at reducing the Air Force's infrastructure and improving the maintenance, information management, and acquisition processes; (4) though generally responsive to the act's requirements, the Air Force's schedule provides a management framework that lacks an overall strategy and specific elements needed to assess implementation progress, measure success, and identify needed changes; (5) while the schedule's initiatives are linked to higher level Air Force logistics goals and objectives, there is no strategy that ensures the efforts are coordinated, nor are specific performance goals and baselines established to measure the overall results of the initiatives; (6) in prior work, GAO noted that the lack of a detailed management framework contributed to the Department of Defense's (DOD) difficulty in implementing new initiatives; and (7) the Government Performance and Results Act offers a model for developing an effective management framework through the use of strategic plans and establishment of performance measures to assess the results of the initiatives and improve the likelihood of successful implementation.

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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