Little Assurance That Defense Made Proper System Selection Decisions

Defense has little assurance that its transportation system selections are cost-effective. In some cases, Defense selected migration systems that will lose money if implemented as migration systems. Specifically:
For all system selections, Defense did not consider developing new systems or contracting for services as required by Office of Management and Budget, General Services Administration, and Defense directives. To its credit, Defense reviewed commercial off-the-shelf transportation software products for some transportation business areas while making its migration system selections. However, this review was inadequate because it did not analyze the degree to which unmodified software could meet unique Defense requirements, identify the expected cost to make necessary software modifications, determine the time required to make modifications, and provide for a hands-on view of the software in operation. JTCC’s Migration Systems Selection Analysis

Had Defense followed its own regulations and calculated investment returns, it would have found—based on data available when the migration systems were selected—that two of the selected systems would lose money if implemented as migration systems. GAO Comments

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Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defenses' (DOD) transportation migration systems.

What GAO Found

GAO found that DOD: (1) has little assurance that its transportation migration systems are cost-effective; (2) selected its transportation migration systems without fully evaluating government or commercial alternatives; (3) relied on incomplete and unverified cost data in making its selections; (4) selected migration systems that will lose money if implemented; (5) did not consider developing new systems or contracting for services; (6) made some of its selection decisions based on the judgement of transportation experts; (7) reviewed commercial off-the-shelf transportation software products while making migration system selections; (8) did not analyze the extent to which unmodified software could meet its requirements, identify software modification costs, or provide a hands-on view of the software in operation; (9) did not assess how changes to its transportation operations would affect the migration systems; and (10) did not ensure that the new migration system would yield savings.