Land Management Systems

The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Automated Land and Mineral Record System/Modernization, which is estimated to cost $428 million, is intended to improve BLM's ability to record, maintain, and retrieve land description, ownership, and use information. To date, the Bureau has been completing most of the project's tasks according to the schedule milestones set in 1993. In coming months, the work will become more difficult as BLM and the primary contractor try to complete, integrate, and test the new software system and meet the current schedule. The Bureau is trying to maintain the project schedule, but slippages may yet occur because little time was allocated to deal with unanticipated problems. BLM recently sought to obtain independent verification and validation to ensure that the new system software meets the Bureau's requirements. A key risk remains, however. BLM's plans include stress testing only a portion of the Automated Land and Mineral Record System/ Modernization, rather than the entire project, to ensure that all systems and technology can successfully process workloads expected during peak operating periods. By limiting the stress test, BLM cannot be certain that the system's information technology will perform as intended during peak workloads.

GAO found that: (1) although BLM initiated ALMRS planning in the early 1980s, it did not award the modernization contract until 1993 because of numerous changes in the project's concept and scope; (2) BLM has installed most of its initial computer and telecommunications equipment and has met most of its schedule milestones, but it is deferring some equipment deployment until fiscal year (FY) 1996 and FY 1997 because of a lack of funds; (3) project costs are expected to exceed the FY 1996 spending limit by $25.5 million due to added system requirements; (4) schedule slippages may occur because ALMRS modernization is becoming more complicated and BLM has allocated little time to deal with unanticipated problems; and (5) although BLM has recently obtained independent verification and validation of new ALMRS software to ensure that it meets BLM needs, BLM does not plan to stress test the entire ALMRS modernization project to access its ability to meet anticipated peak workloads.

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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