Best Practices: Increased Focus on Requirements and Oversight Needed to Improve DOD's Acquisition Environment and Weapon System Quality

DoD partially agreed with GAO's recommendation. In July 2008, the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) issued a policy that directs the military services and defense agencies to establish a reliability improvement acquisition policy to address the problem of inadequate system reliability, availability, and maintainability. As part of this effort, each policy is to include practices that ensure development contracts evaluate reliability, availability, and maintainability during system design and to evaluate the appropriate use of contract incentives to achieve these objectives. This action by DOD is broader than what we recommended, however, the requirements of the policy meet the intent of our recommendation. The House of Representatives is also considering acquisition reform legislation that would require the inclusion of provisions related to systems engineering and reliability growth in requests for proposals and developmental test and evaluation.

The Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 requires the Secretary of Defense to establish configuration steering boards for all major defense acquisition programs, thus expanding the use of the configuration steering board initiative. In March 2010 we reported that 7 of 42 programs we assessed held configuration steering board meetings in 2009 and in July 2011, we reported that 74 of 96 programs held these meetings in 2010.

Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) is in various stages of developing three web-based tools that will provide metrics for measuring the effectiveness of contractors' quality management systems for DOD programs. This includes the development of several indicators that measure contractor quality, through tracking of corrective action requests, quality defects, and the effectiveness of supplier control procedures, among other things. Initial software releases for each of the tools have been completed. Additional functionality will be added throughout 2011 and early 2012.

Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) is in various stages of developing three web-based tools that will provide metrics for measuring the effectiveness of contractors' quality management systems for DOD programs. One tool uses a supplier's past performance to help predict their ability to provide quality products and will also be used to assist the agency in determining the type and frequency of surveillance that is required at a supplier's facility. Inital tool functionality was deployed in March 2011 and upgraded capabilities are expected to be deployed through the end of fiscal year 2011.