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Defense IRM: Critical Risks Facing New Materiel Management Strategy

AIMD-96-109 Published: Sep 06, 1996. Publicly Released: Sep 06, 1996.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) Joint Logistics Systems Center's (JLSC) development and deployment of standard materiel management systems.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should stop the materiel management system development and deployment until the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics completes an economic analysis and a comprehensive implementation plan, including actions to be taken, schedules, milestones, and performance measures, and a technical risk plan.
Closed – Implemented
The services and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), in conjunction with the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Logistics (DUSD(L)) and JLSC are implementing a new materiel management systems strategy (MMSS) following the failure of the MMSS initiative to meet the requirements of having a standard suite of systems at the inventory control points. This new strategy is basically returning to the previous strategy of having the services and DLA modernize their individual inventory control points whichever way they want. Some will implement pieces of the MMSS suite of systems and some will modernize by integrating some new commercial-off-the-shelf packages with their legacy systems. The goals of standard processes and systems to meet interoperability needs appears to have been abandoned in favor of an electronic data interchange-based transaction interface for the MILS transactions.
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should stop the materiel management system development and deployment until the full Major Automated Information System Review Council reviews and approves these plans.
Closed – Implemented
Based on action taken as a result of GAO's report recommendations, significant cuts have been made in the MMSS program. The services and DLA are now responsible for modernizing their inventory control point environment and the original DUSD(L) plan for a standard suite of systems has been abandoned in favor of a combination of commercial-off-the-shelf-based systems and modernized legacy systems. This approach, however, has not been justified by a new economic analysis. The DUSD(L) position is that this is now the responsibility of each service and DLA, and thus, a Major Automated Information System Review Committee is not required.

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Topics

ConcurrencyDefense cost controlFederal supply systemsInventory control systemsLegacy systemsManagement information systemsMilitary inventoriesMilitary materielStrategic planningSystems conversionsTestingSystems testing