DOD Business Systems Modernization: Governance Mechanisms for Implementing Management Controls Need to Be Improved

Abstract

DOD is one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world, and is entrusted with more taxpayer dollars than any other federal department or agency. For fiscal year 2013, the department requested approximately $613.9 billion $525.4 billion in spending authority for its base operations and an additional $88.5 billion to support overseas contingency operations, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. In support of its military operations, DOD performs an assortment of interrelated and interdependent business functions, such as logistics management, procurement, health care management, and financial management. As we have previously reported, the DOD systems environment that supports these business functions is overly complex and error prone, and is characterized by (1) little standardization across the department, (2) multiple systems performing the same tasks, (3) the same data stored in multiple systems, and (4) the need for data to be entered manually into multiple systems.8 The department recently requested about $17.2 billion for its business systems environment and IT infrastructure investments for fiscal year 2013. According to the department s systems inventory, this environment is composed of about 2,200 business systems and includes 310 financial management, 724 human resource management, 580 logistics, 254 real property and installation, and 287 weapon acquisition management systems. DOD currently bears responsibility, in whole or in part, for 14 of the 30 areas across the federal government that we have designated as high risk.10 Seven of these areas are specific to the department,11 and 7 other high-risk areas are shared with other federal agencies.12 Collectively, these high-risk areas relate to DOD s major business operations that are inextricably linked to the department s ability to perform its overall mission.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA561556

Entities

People

  • Anh Le
  • Debra Conner
  • Donald Sebers
  • Jennifer Stavros-turner
  • Mark Bird
  • Michael Holland
  • Neelaxi Lakhmani
  • Rebecca Eyler
  • Valerie C. Melvin

Organizations

  • United States Government Accountability Office

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Cyber
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Business Administration
  • Business Process Reengineering
  • Commerce
  • Congress
  • Department Of Defense
  • Financial Management
  • Governments
  • Information Systems
  • Law
  • Logistics
  • Management Personnel
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Resource Management
  • Supply Chain Management
  • Systems Management
  • United States Government

Readers

  • Economics
  • Government Contracting/Procurement.
  • Logistics and Supply Chain Management.