System Inventories Are Integral to Correcting the Year 2000 Problem and Managing Information Technology Resources

As discussed in our Year 2000 Assessment Guide, agencies need to ensure that they have complete and accurate enterprisewide inventories of their information systems during the assessment phase of the Year 2000 correction effort. The inventory also plays a very critical role in the later stages of the Year 2000 process, which include renovation, validation, and implementation. As discussed in our Year 2000 Assessment Guide, system inventories serve as a useful Year 2000 decision-making tool, by offering added assurance that all systems are identified and linked to a specific business area or process, and that all enterprisewide cross boundary systems are considered. Importance of DIST for DOD’s Year 2000 Efforts

Defense has designated the Defense Integration Support Tools database to be the departmentwide automated information systems inventory for use in making information technology decisions and managing the Year 2000 effort. For example, in November 1996, the Under Secretary for Defense (Comptroller) and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence issued a joint memorandum to senior Defense managers stating that they considered DIST to be “the backbone tool for managing the Department’s Information Technology investment strategies, identifying functional information systems interfaces and data exchange requirements, and managing the efforts to fix the Year 2000 problem.”
In its Year 2000 Management Plan, Defense reaffirmed that DIST will be the official repository for the DOD components and added that the reason components are required to report every quarter on their systems and are encouraged to report significant progress on their systems is “to give DOD the visibility necessary to ensure a thorough and successful transition to Year 2000 compliance for all DOD systems.” It also stated that this reporting “will also keep other functional , that your systems interface with or exchange data with, informed as to the status of your Year 2000 compliance progress.” Finally, Defense noted that the DIST needed to be up-to-date so that it could keep the Congress informed on the Department’s efforts to achieve Year 2000 compliance. DOD Recognizes DIST Data Integrity Problems

Defense has recognized that DIST is currently not a reliable and accurate management tool that can have a beneficial impact on the Year 2000 effort or on other initiatives to improve and manage information systems. As a result, the ASD/C3I and DISA have undertaken initiatives to improve the reliability of DIST data and to increase their user friendliness. DIST also does not contain key scheduling and tracking information, such as when critical systems within the services’ and components’ Year 2000 programs will be in the various phases and whether a system is behind schedule. Second, the Department as a whole will be constrained in its ability to ensure that all systems owned by the military services and components are being made Year 2000 compliant. Third, without an enterprisewide inventory, Defense cannot adequately ensure that all interfaces are properly identified and corrected. However, in order to ensure complete validation of DIST, we believe that the Office of the ASD/C3I and DISA need to supplement these actions with efforts that involve fully comparing service inventories (and command inventories in the case of the Navy) to DIST and reconciling differences identified.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) efforts to improve the Defense Integration Support Tools (DIST) database, which serves as the DOD inventory of automated information systems and is intended to be used as a tool to help DOD components in addressing year 2000 date problems.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) a critical step in solving the year 2000 problem is to conduct an enterprisewide inventory of information systems for each business area to establish the necessary foundation for year 2000 program planning; (2) a thorough inventory also ensures that all systems are identified and linked to a specific business area or process, and that all enterprisewide cross-boundary systems are considered; (3) in addition, the inventory can play a critical role in the later stages of year 2000 correction; (4) for DOD, this inventory is particularly important given the tens of thousands of systems and the many interfaces between systems owned by the services and DOD agencies and considering that these systems vary widely in their importance in carrying out DOD missions; (5) in such a complex system environment, the inventory helps facilitate information technology resource and trade-off decisions; (6) the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (ASD/C3I) and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) have recognized that, at present, DIST, the Department's enterprisewide inventory, is not a reliable and accurate tool for managing DOD's year 2000 effort; (7) as a result, the Office of the ASD/C3I and DISA have initiated efforts to: (a) improve the integrity of DIST inventory information; (b) facilitate access to information within the database; and (c) ensure that services and components input information needed to complete the inventory; (8) however, given the pace at which these efforts have been proceeding, GAO does not believe that DIST will be usable and reliable in time to have a beneficial impact on year 2000 correction efforts; (9) without a complete inventory, the Department as a whole cannot adequately assess departmentwide progress toward correcting the year 2000 problem and address crosscutting issues--such as whether system interfaces are being properly handled and whether there is a need for additional testing facilities; and (10) thus, the Office of the ASD/C3I and DISA need to expedite efforts to complete the DIST inventory before substantial renovation efforts begin in the services and components, and ensure that the information in DIST is accurate, complete, reliable, and usable.