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GAO-12-720R 1 (2012-07-19)

handle is hein.gao/gaobacghp0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Accountaybiliti Integrity - Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 July 19, 2012 Lt. Gen. Patrick J O'Reilly Director Missile Defense Agency 5700 18th Street Fort Belvoir, VA 22060 Subject: Schedule Best Practices Provide Opportunity to Enhance Missile Defense Agency Accountability and Program Execution Dear Lt. Gen. O'Reilly: During the course of our annual assessment of the Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) ongoing cost, schedule, testing and performance progress for the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS),1 we performed a detailed analysis comparing the schedules for five MDA programs-the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA, Aegis Ashore, Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS), and the Targets and Countermeasures Extended Medium-Range Ballistic Missile (eMRBM) target-to best practices GAO has identified for schedule development.2 We did not report on this detailed analysis, which has implications for transparency and accountability of MDA programs, in the April 2012 review; instead, we are providing in this report (1) the results of how the MDA program schedules compare to the nine best practices and (2) a summary of how these MDA program results compare to the results of analysis GAO has conducted of program schedules in other agencies. During our review, management officials for the MDA programs we reviewed expressed a willingness to learn from best practices for scheduling and identified steps they were already taking to address deficiencies we identified. We selected the five MDA programs based on recent congressional interest, program budget and trends, program phase, value to other programs or GAO work, and program variety. Four of the five programs we reviewed had schedules owned and maintained by contractors rather than by the government. Of the five programs we selected, only Aegis Ashore, which does not have a prime contractor, maintained a government schedule. In addition, we were unable to conduct the analysis on GMD's prime contract due to technical difficulties with the software used to maintain the program schedule and therefore, selected a different GMD contract that includes an upcoming flight test and post-test analysis for this 1GAO, Missile Defense: Opportunity Exists to Strengthen Acquisitions by Reducing Concurrency, GAO-1 2-486 (Washington, D.C.: April 20, 2012). 2GAO, GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide: Best Practices for Developing and Managing Capital Program Costs, GAO-09-3SP (Washington, D.C.: March 2009); and GAO Schedule Assessment Guide Exposure Draft, GAO-12-12OG (Washington, D.C.: May 2012). GAO-12-720R MDA Schedule Practices and Accountability

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