Army Modernization: Army Should Improve Use of Alternative Agreements and Approaches by Enhancing Oversight and Communication of Lessons Learned
Fast Facts
Federal contracts aren't the only way that the Army can fund research and development for modern technology. It can also make grants, develop research agreements to share costs or resources, and more.
The Army also uses alternative approaches—such as technology competitions and increased access to Army labs—to engage with academia and companies that don't usually participate in federal defense contracts.
Various parts of the Army organization use these agreements and approaches. But the Army hasn't analyzed how they're working or shared lessons learned Army-wide. We recommended doing so to help shape future decisions.
Highlights
What GAO Found
In its effort to modernize weapon systems capabilities, the Army increasingly uses alternative agreements instead of Federal Acquisition Regulation-based contracts for research and development and has expanded the use of alternative approaches that engage industry and academia. The Army's use of these agreements and approaches provides flexibilities and reduces barriers to creating new partnerships. One type of alternative agreement—other transactions for prototype projects, which help evaluate the feasibility or utility of a technology—has driven the recent expansion in the overall use of alternative agreements to support Army modernization (see figure).
Army Alternative Agreement Obligations, Fiscal Years 2017-2019
Army organizations use established processes to oversee alternative approaches and agreements. For alternative approaches, Army Futures Command—the Army's lead for requirements and technology development—demonstrates an awareness of how these activities support modernization through the command's role as senior leadership or as an active participant. For alternative agreements, Army Futures Command has not regularly analyzed the use of alternative agreements to gain insight on the distribution and trends in use. Such analysis could provide the command and other Army stakeholders in contracting and acquisition with improved information to help manage risks in decision-making for development and acquisition in support of modernization.
GAO found that Army organizations lack consistent, coordinated practices to identify and share lessons learned from entering into alternative agreements or executing alternative approaches. The use of consistent, coordinated lessons learned practices for alternative agreements can improve the processes leading up to an agreement by including more diverse perspectives and ensuring that lessons learned are not confined to a subset of organizations or officials involved in decision-making. In addition, improvements to the lessons learned practices used for the Army's alternative approaches would provide its personnel with increased access to what has worked well and what has not when interacting with industry and academia. Improved sharing of these lessons learned can help the Army more effectively engage with new partners in support of its modernization goals.
Why GAO Did This Study
The Army annually invests billions of dollars in science and technology projects to support weapon systems modernization. These projects often involve the use of alternative agreements outside the Federal Acquisition Regulation. The Army also uses alternative approaches to reduce barriers to partnerships with industry and academia. In doing so, the Army has lessons learned available to it about, for example, the type of alternative agreement to use or how to better execute an alternative approach.
GAO was asked to review the Army's alternative agreements and approaches for modernization. This report examines the Army's use, oversight efforts, and lessons learned practices for alternative agreements and approaches.
GAO reviewed information about the Army's use and oversight of alternative agreements and approaches; compared applicable Army portfolio management and lessons learned activities to GAO's leading practices; and interviewed Army officials.
Recommendations
GAO is making six recommendations to the Army, including that Army Futures Command regularly analyzes information on alternative agreement use to inform modernization decisions and that Army organizations demonstrate consistent, coordinated practices that support sharing of lessons learned information on alternative agreements and approaches. The Army concurred with all six recommendations.
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of the Army | The Secretary of the Army should direct the Army Futures Command, in collaboration with the Army Contracting Command and the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, to regularly analyze information on the use of prototype other transactions for Army modernization. (Recommendation 1) |
The Department of the Army concurred with this recommendation but, as of July 2024, has yet to fully demonstrate actions to implement it. In July 2022, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement issued a memo stating that regular analysis of information on the use of prototype other transactions for Army modernization would improve the Army's practices, products, and services for the warfighter. In July 2024, an Army official confirmed that ongoing pilots within the Combat Capabilities Development Command--which resides under Army Futures Command--are focused on ensuring oversight and decision-making practices related to prototype other transactions. The Army stated that these pilots are being refined to establish an appropriate means to capture and track accurate and complete data on these types of agreements on a regular basis. As part of its ongoing pilots, the Army stated that it plans to consistently incorporate information on agreement types into existing reviews of its science and technology investments beginning with the next review planned for late 2024. The Army's actions have resulted in progress toward fully implementing this recommendation. However, until the Army institutes practices that facilitate regular, coordinated analyses of the department's distribution and trends involving its use prototype other transactions, the Army risks making modernization decisions using fragmented information. We will continue to monitor the Army's progress in fully implementing this recommendation.
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| Department of the Army | The Secretary of the Army should direct the Army Futures Command, in collaboration with the Army Contracting Command, to regularly analyze information on the use of grants, cooperative agreements, research other transactions, technology investment agreements, partnership intermediary agreements, and cooperative research and development agreements for Army modernization. (Recommendation 2) |
The Department of the Army concurred with this recommendation but, as of July 2024, has yet to fully demonstrate actions to implement it. In July 2022, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement issued a memo stating that regular analysis of information on the use of grants, cooperative agreements, research other transactions, technology investment agreements, partnership intermediary agreements, and cooperative research and development agreements for Army modernization would improve the Army's practices, products, and services for the warfighter. In July 2024, an Army official confirmed that ongoing pilots within the Combat Capabilities Development Command--which resides under Army Futures Command--are focused on ensuring oversight and decision-making practices related to these agreement types. The Army stated that these pilots are being refined to establish an appropriate means to capture and track accurate and complete data on these agreements on a regular basis. As part of its ongoing pilots, the Army stated that it plans to consistently incorporate information on these agreement types into existing reviews of its science and technology investments beginning with the next review planned for late 2024. We will continue to monitor the Army's efforts to establish a defined, repeatable process that demonstrates Army implementation of this recommendation.
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| Department of the Army | The Secretary of the Army should ensure the Commanding General of the Army Contracting Command establishes consistent practices for its headquarters to collect, archive, and share lessons learned for research and prototype other transactions, grants, cooperative agreements, technology investment agreements, and partnership intermediary agreements. (Recommendation 3) |
The Department of the Army concurred with this recommendation and its Army Contracting Command headquarters took action that established consistent practices for collecting, archiving, and sharing lessons learned for research and prototype other transactions, grants, cooperative agreements, technology investment agreements, and partnership intermediary agreements. In June 2023, an official from Army Contracting Command provided information confirming that the command created a website where Army users can collect, archive, and share lessons learned for all of the agreement types included in this recommendation. The official also provided documentation stating that the command's Procurement Support Division will be responsible for collecting, reviewing, consolidating, and propagating lessons learned on a quarterly basis to influence organizational plans, policy, procedures, guidelines, tools, and training.
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| Department of the Army | The Secretary of the Army should ensure the Commanding General of the Army Contracting Command has the command's contracting centers work with its headquarters to establish consistent, coordinated practices for the contracting centers to collect, analyze, validate, archive, and share lessons learned for research and prototype other transactions, grants, cooperative agreements, technology investment agreements, and partnership intermediary agreements. (Recommendation 4) |
The Department of the Army concurred with this recommendation and its Army Contracting Command took action that established consistent, coordinated practices for the contracting centers to collect, analyze, validate, archive, and share lessons learned or research and prototype other transactions, grants, cooperative agreements, technology investment agreements, and partnership intermediary agreements. In June 2023, an official from Army Contracting Command provided information confirming that the command created a central website where Army users can collect, archive, and share lessons learned for all of the agreement types included in this recommendation. Additionally, individual contracting centers have websites linked to the command's central website where senior contracting officials can add, access, and share lessons learned related to the different agreement types. The senior contracting officials are responsible for ensuring these sites are actively maintained.
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| Department of the Army | The Secretary of the Army should ensure the Commanding General of the Combat Capabilities Development Command establishes consistent, coordinated practices for the command to collect, analyze, validate, archive, and share lessons learned for cooperative research and development agreements. (Recommendation 5) |
The Department of the Army agreed with this recommendation and took action to establish practices that will support regular opportunities to collect and share lessons learned for cooperative research and development agreements (CRADA). In September 2021, the Army confirmed that its Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Research and Technology) had worked with officials from Army laboratories and technical centers to collect lessons learned for CRADA and create an initial best practices document. In March 2022, the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement made this CRADA best practices document available on its interactive knowledge management portal--procurement.army.mil (PAM)--for use by personnel across the Army. In addition to providing access to this best practices document, PAM also states that the document will be updated periodically using feedback from CRADA users and it offers a method for providing real-time input on best practices. These actions are consistent with our recommendation, as they established lessons learned for the CRADAs and demonstrate the Army's commitment to continue collecting, evaluating, and sharing lessons learned. As a result, we are closing this recommendation as implemented.
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| Department of the Army | The Secretary of the Army should ensure an archive is established to store and share lessons learned information related to the Army's alternative approaches for engaging industry and academia. (Recommendation 6) |
The Department of the Army concurred with this recommendation and took action that established a mechanism for storing and sharing lessons learned information for the Army's alternative approaches used to engage industry and academia. In October 2023, the Army confirmed that its Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology created an archive as part of its central knowledge management website for each of the alternative approaches included in our report to store and share lessons learned information. A senior Army procurement official also confirmed that representatives for the Army alternative approaches were notified to begin uploading their lessons learned information to the new archive. Further, the official provided examples of lessons learned information that is expected to be archived on the website. These actions address the shortfalls we found in archiving and sharing lessons learned that led to our recommendation.
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