Coast Guard

New Communication System to Support Search and Rescue Faces Challenges Gao ID: GAO-03-1111 September 30, 2003

Search and rescue--one of the Coast Guard's oldest missions--involves minimizing the loss of life, injury, and property damage by aiding people and boats in distress. The Coast Guard has previously reported that its 30-year-old search and rescue communication system, called the National Distress and Response System, has several deficiencies and is difficult to maintain. Thus, the Coast Guard contracted to replace and modernize it with a new system, called Rescue 21. GAO was asked to identify the status and plans of the Coast Guard's acquisition of Rescue 21 and the technical and program risks associated with Rescue 21.

Rescue 21's original schedule, which called for it to achieve initial operating capability by September 2003, has been postponed, and the Coast Guard has not yet finalized a new schedule. This postponement was due in part to the development of the system taking longer than planned. GAO reviewed the Coast Guard's management of three risk areas associated with Rescue 21. (1) Test management: scheduled completion dates for key tests are still being determined. These key tests (formal qualification testing, system integration testing, and operational testing and evaluation) are incremental tests that the Coast Guard is planning to perform before reaching initial operating capability. Completion dates are not yet set because the Coast Guard decided to postpone initial operating capability due to delays in the original test schedule, which resulted in increased risks associated with compressing and overlapping key tests. In addition, key deliverables, including test plans, are still outstanding, and no scheduled completion dates exist. (2) Requirements management: the Coast Guard has a process in place for managing system requirements. (3) Risk management: the Coast Guard has a program in place for identifying, prioritizing, and minimizing risks. Two high risks identified by the Coast Guard are software development and environmental concerns related to the construction of new antenna sites, which may delay the implementation of Rescue 21.

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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