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GAO-21-267R 1 (2021-02-22)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaecmj0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 1 U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE G A O 1A Century of Non-Partisan Fact-Based Work 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 February 22, 2021 Congressional Committees SERVICE ACQUISITIONS: DOD's Report to Congress Identifies Steps Taken to Improve Management, But Does Not Address Some Key Planning Issues The Department of Defense (DOD) relies on contractors to provide a wide array of services, including support for management, information technology, and weapon systems. In fiscal year 2019, DOD obligated about $190 billion on service acquisitions, which accounted for nearly half of DOD's total contract obligations. Our past work, however, has identified issues with DOD's management of service acquisitions, including limited visibility into DOD's future spending plans, and narrowly-scoped requirements reviews focused on individual contracts rather than a more holistic approach that comprehensively considers service requirements within and across portfolios. Since 2011, we have made 29 recommendations for improvement, 22 of which DOD has acted on to date, but seven of which remain unimplemented. In 1992, we added DOD contracting to our High-Risk List, which we update every two years to identify programs and operations that are 'high risk' due to their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or that need transformation. Since 2001, we have highlighted service acquisitions as an issue for oversight within the DOD Contract Management area.2 The Senate report on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 included a provision for the Secretary of Defense to submit a report to the congressional defense committees on current mechanisms for overseeing defense service contracts, and for GAO to assess this report. DOD submitted its report to Congress on October 9, 2020. Our report assesses the extent to which that DOD report addresses service acquisition issues identified in our past work, particularly the 2019 High-Risk List.3 To do so, we reviewed DOD's October 2020 report to Congress, including the report's recommendations for future improvements. We also reviewed issues our past work identified with DOD's service acquisitions, including those highlighted in our 2019 High-Risk List and 11 other products issued between 2011 and 2018, and assessed the extent to which DOD's report addressed those issues. Additionally, we reviewed DOD's January 2020 instruction that governs service acquisitions and assessed the changes made to its predecessor instruction, which DOD issued in January 2016.4 We conducted interviews and, where appropriate, collected 1GAO, High-Risk Series: Defense Contract Pricing, HR-93-8 (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 1, 1992). 2GAO, High-Risk Series: An Update, GAO-01-263 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 1, 2001). 3GAO, High-Risk Series: Substantial Efforts Needed to Achieve Greater Progress on High-Risk Areas, GAO-19- 157SP (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 6, 2019). 4Department of Defense, Defense Acquisition of Services, DOD Instruction 5000.74, January 10, 2020; and Defense Acquisition of Services, DOD Instruction 5000.74, January 5, 2016. GAO-21-267R Service Acquisitions Page 1

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