Defense Acquisitions: Information for Congress on Performance of Major Programs Can Be More Complete, Timely, and Accessible
GAO-05-182
Published: Mar 28, 2005. Publicly Released: Mar 28, 2005.
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Highlights
DOD has more than $1 trillion worth of major defense acquisition programs, on which it must report to Congress, including a comparison of a current program's costs to a baseline containing its cost, quantity, schedule, and performance goals. When these goals are changed, the program is "rebaselined" to reflect current status. However, measuring current estimates against the most recent baseline without additional perspectives may obscure for Congress how programs are performing over time. Concerned over this, you asked GAO to examine how DOD's use of rebaselining has affected the adequacy of data provided to Congress on major defense acquisition programs.
Recommendations
Matter for Congressional Consideration
| Matter | Status | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| DOD's policy of excluding the effects of quantity reductions or capability increases in determining unit cost breaches of Nunn-McCurdy thresholds may not provide Congress the information it sought on program buying power in requiring unit cost reporting. Therefore, Congress may wish to consider whether DOD's use of these programmatic adjustments is appropriate. | In our March 2005 report (GAO-05-182), we provided Matters for Congressional Consideration regarding DOD's policy of excluding the effects of quantity reductions or capability increases in determining unit cost breaches of Nunn-McCurdy thresholds. We noted that this practice may not provide Congress the information it sought on program buying power in requiring unit cost reporting. Therefore, we believed that Congress may wish to consider the appropriateness of DOD's use of these programmatic adjustments. To address the issues that we reported, Congress, in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2006, revised Title 10 U.S.C. sections 2432 and 2433, requiring the Secretary of Defense to: (1) include in its reports on unit cost any adjustments or revisions, together with the reason for such adjustments or revisions and (2) report unit cost increases of at least 30 percent or more than 50 percent against the first full baseline estimate approved at System Development and Demonstration--Milestone B. The existing requirement of 15 and 25 percent unit cost thresholds was retained for reporting against the current baseline estimate. |
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Defense | To provide Congress with more complete, timely, and accessible information, the Secretary of Defense should measure and report a full history of unit cost performance in constant dollars by comparing the latest cost and quantity estimates with (1) the first full estimate (typically the original acquisition program baseline established at Milestone B); (2) the current approved baseline or, if the program rebaselines, the prior approved program baseline; and (3) the estimate established with the previous year's budget request. These should be implemented in the department's reporting of data on major defense acquisition program baselines and performance. |
DOD implemented this recommendation by modifying its Consolidated Acquisition Reporting System by adding a new subsection to the Unit Cost Section of the Selected Acquisition Report. The new subsection contains the program acquisition unit cost and average procurement cost in base-year and then-year dollars for all acquisition baseline estimates.
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| Department of Defense | To provide Congress with more complete, timely, and accessible information, the Secretary of Defense should fully disclose to Congress the nature and extent of programmatic adjustments affecting Nunn-McCurdy threshold determinations, pending any congressional direction on this issue. This should be implemented in the departments' reporting of data on major defense acquisition program baselines and performance. |
This recommendation has been implemented in the Unit Cost Section of the December 2005 Selected Acquisition Reports. There were no programmatic adjustments in the December 2005 reports.
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| Department of Defense | To provide Congress with more complete, timely, and accessible information, the Secretare of Defense should notify Congress when rebaselining actions are approved. This should be implemented in the departments' reporting of data on major defense acquisition program baselines and performance. |
In order to comply with this recommendation, DOD now includes with each new Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) submission a summary of new rebaselines that have occurred since the prior SAR submission. The summary will include the date of the acquisition program baseline (APB) approval and the reason for the rebaseline for each program that had a new APB approved since the prior SAR submission.
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| Department of Defense | To provide Congress with more complete, timely, and accessible information, the Secretary of Defense should separately report classified and unclassified SAR information. This should be implemented in the departments' reporting of data on major defense acquisition program baselines and performance. |
DOD implemented this recommendation with the electronic submission of the unclassified information from the December 2005 Selected Acquisition Reports (SAR) to Congress via the Defense Acquisition Management Information Retrieval (DAMIR) website. The classified information in the December 2005 SARs was extracted from the electronic submission and provided separately in a hardcopy, classified annex for each program containing classified information. DOD plans to continue to transmit unclassified information from the SARs to Congress via the DAMIR.
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Full Report
Topics
AccountabilityCost analysisData integrityDefense capabilitiesDefense cost controlDefense procurementInternal controlsProgram evaluationProgram managementReporting requirementsPerformance measuresTimeliness