DOD Systems Modernization: Management of Integrated Military	 
Human Capital Program Needs Additional Improvements (11-FEB-05,  
GAO-05-189).							 
                                                                 
The Department of Defense (DOD) has long-standing problems with  
its information technology (IT) systems supporting military	 
personnel and pay. To address these problems, DOD initiated the  
Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System (DIMHRS)	 
program, which is to provide a joint, integrated, standardized	 
military personnel and pay system across all military components.
In November 2004, DOD accepted the design for the first of three 
phases, DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay). GAO reviewed DOD's management of 
the requirements definition for the system as well as the	 
program's management structure. 				 
-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-05-189 					        
    ACCNO:   A17576						        
  TITLE:     DOD Systems Modernization: Management of Integrated      
Military Human Capital Program Needs Additional Improvements	 
     DATE:   02/11/2005 
  SUBJECT:   Accountability					 
	     Human resources utilization			 
	     Military pay					 
	     Military personnel 				 
	     Personnel management				 
	     Program management 				 
	     Requirements definition				 
	     Systems design					 
	     Information technology				 
	     Information systems				 
	     Integrated software				 
	     Payroll systems					 
	     Human capital					 
	     Defense Integrated Military Human			 
	     Resource System					 
                                                                 

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GAO-05-189

                 United States Government Accountability Office

                     GAO Report to the Secretary of Defense

February 2005

DOD SYSTEMS MODERNIZATION

    Management of Integrated Military Human Capital Program Needs Additional
                                  Improvements

                                       a

GAO-05-189

[IMG]

February 2005

DOD SYSTEMS MODERNIZATION

Management of Integrated Military Human Capital Program Needs Additional
Improvements

What GAO Found

DOD faces significant management challenges with DIMHRS, a major system
acquisition program that is expected to lead to major changes in the
processing of military personnel and pay. To its credit, DOD has begun
taking steps to ensure that the requirements and the design for the first
phase of the program are consistent with each other by tracing backward
and forward between the detailed requirements and the system design, and
it did obtain formal user acceptance of the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
high-level requirements. However, it has not obtained user acceptance of
the detailed requirements. Furthermore, it has not ensured that the
detailed requirements are complete and understandable. For example,
requirements for the interfaces between DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and
existing systems have not yet been fully defined because DOD has not yet
determined how many legacy systems will be partially replaced and thus
require modification. Furthermore, DOD is still determining whether the
data requirements provided to the contractor for system design are
complete. Finally, an estimated 77 percent of the detailed requirements
are difficult to understand, based on GAO's review of a random sample of
the requirements documentation. These challenges increase the risk that
the delivered system capabilities will not fully meet the users' needs.

Moreover, although DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) is to be an integrated system,
its development is not being governed by integrated tools and approaches,
such as an integrated program management structure, enterprise
architecture, and master schedule. Furthermore, while DOD is appropriately
attempting to maximize the use of commercial, off-the shelf (COTS)
products in building the new system, it has not adequately followed some
important best practices associated with COTS-based system acquisitions.
For example, DOD's program plan/schedule does not adequately recognize the
needs of end-user organizations for the time and resources to integrate
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) with their respective legacy systems and to prepare
their workforces for the organizational changes that the system will
introduce.

DOD's requirements definition challenges and shortcomings in program
governance can be attributed to a number of causes, including the
program's overly schedule-driven approach and DOD's difficulty in
overcoming its long-standing cultural resistance to departmentwide
solutions. Unless these challenges are addressed, the risk is increased
that the system will not provide expected capabilities and benefits on
time and within budget. Given the limitations in some DOD components'
ability to accurately pay military personnel, it is vital that these risks
be addressed swiftly and effectively.

                 United States Government Accountability Office

Contents

Letter

DOD's Management of the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) Requirements
Definition Has Recently Improved, but Key Aspects of
Requirements Definition Remain a Challenge

DOD Does Not Have a Well-Integrated Management Structure for
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and Is Not Following All Relevant
Supporting Acquisition Management Processes

Conclusions

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

1

3

                                                                     6 8 9 10

Appendix I	Briefing to Department of Defense Officials, November 30, 2004

Appendix II Comments from the Department of Defense

Appendix III GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

BEA Business Enterprise Architecture
CMM Capability Maturity Model
COTS commercial, off-the-shelf
DFAS Defense Finance and Accounting Service
DIMHRS Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System
DOD Department of Defense
GAO Government Accountability Office
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
IT information technology
JFMIP Joint Financial Management Improvement Program
JPMO Joint Program Management Office
JR&IO Joint Requirements and Integration Office
NII Networks and Information Integration
ORD Operational Requirements Document
P&R Personnel and Readiness
PEO-IT Program Executive Office, Information Technology
PMO Program Management Office
PSA Principal Staff Assistant
SEI Software Engineering Institute

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                      reproduce this material separately.

United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548

February 11, 2005

The Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld The Secretary of Defense

Dear Mr. Secretary:

As we first reported in 1993, the Department of Defense (DOD) has had
serious problems with military personnel and pay systems, including
shortcomings in its ability to properly pay military personnel and to
monitor and track them to, from, and within their duty stations.1 We
recently reported that such problems continue today, particularly for Army
Reserve and National Guard troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.2 These
long-standing problems can be attributed, in part, to

o  	hundreds of supporting information technology (IT) systems, many of
which perform the same tasks and store duplicate data;

o  	the need for manual data reconciliation, correction, and entry across
these nonintegrated systems; and

o  the large number of data translations and system interfaces.

To address these problems, DOD initiated the Defense Integrated Military
Human Resources System (DIMHRS) program, which is to provide a joint,
integrated system that is standardized across all military components. The
system is to be Web-based and maximize the use of commercial,
off-the-shelf (COTS) software. DOD plans to acquire and deploy DIMHRS in
three phases:

o  	DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)-military personnel hiring, promotion,
retirement, etc., and pay;

1 GAO, Financial Management: Defense's System for Army Military Payroll Is
Unreliable, GAO-93-32 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 30, 1993).

2 GAO, Military Pay: Army Reserve Soldiers Mobilized to Active Duty
Experienced Significant Pay Problems, GAO-04-911 (Washington, D.C.: Aug.
20, 2004), and Military Pay: Army National Guard Personnel Mobilized to
Active Duty Experienced Significant Pay Problems, GAO-04-89 (Washington,
D.C.: Nov. 13, 2003).

o  DIMHRS (Manpower)-workforce planning, analysis, utilization, etc.; and

o  DIMHRS (Training).

DOD accepted the design of the first system phase-DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay)-in November 2004 and is now proceeding with development of
the system. Deployment to the Army and the Defense Finance and Accounting
Service (DFAS) is to begin in the second quarter of fiscal year 2006,
followed by deployment to the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.

The first phase, DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), is intended to focus particularly
on

o  	providing joint-theater commanders with accurate and timely human
capital information;

o  	providing active service members, reservists, and National Guard
members with timely and accurate pay and benefits, including those
performing in theaters of operation or combat; and

o  	providing an integrated military personnel and payroll system that
uses standard data definitions across all services and service components,
thereby reducing multiple data entries, system maintenance, pay
discrepancies, and reconciliations of personnel and pay information.

The system design for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) is based on requirements
defined to reflect a new, joint approach to processing military personnel
and pay; this new approach is expected to result in major changes to
current business processes.

Given the importance of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) to DOD's ability to manage
military personnel and pay, we initiated a review, under the authority of
the Comptroller General, of the management of the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
acquisition. Our objectives were to determine

o  	whether DOD has effective processes in place for managing the
definition of the requirements for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and

o  	whether DOD has established an integrated program management structure
for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and is following effective processes for
acquiring a system based on commercial software components.

DOD's Management of the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) Requirements Definition Has
Recently Improved, but Key Aspects of Requirements Definition Remain a

On November 30, 2004, we briefed officials from DOD's Joint Requirements
and Integration Office, the Navy Program Executive Office (IT), and DOD's
Joint Program Management Office on the results of our review. This report
transmits the briefing. The full briefing, including our scope and
methodology, is reprinted as appendix I. We performed our work from
January through November 2004, in accordance with generally accepted
government auditing standards.

DOD has not effectively managed important aspects of the requirements for
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) to ensure that they are complete, correct, and
unambiguous. Requirements are the foundation for designing, developing,
and testing a system. Incorrect or incomplete requirements have been
commonly identified as a cause of systems that do not meet their cost,
schedule, or performance goals. Disciplined processes and controls for the
definition and management of requirements are defined in published models
and guides, such as the Capability Maturity Models developed by Carnegie
Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute and standards developed
by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

DOD's management of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) requirements had several
shortcomings:

                                   Challenge

o  	First, DOD did not initially ensure that the system requirements and
system design were aligned. DOD required the contractor to base the system
design only on high-level (more general) requirements, providing detailed
requirements to the contractor for information only. However, according to
the program office, the system design should be based on the detailed
requirements, and following our inquiries, the program office began
tracing backward and forward between the detailed requirements and the
system design to ensure consistency. Among other things, DOD is analyzing
financial system standards to ensure that all applicable standards are
included in the requirements and design for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).
Without consistency between requirements and design, the risk is increased
that the developed and deployed system will not fully satisfy financial
system standards and users' needs.

o  	Second, DOD did not ensure that the detailed requirements include
important content and that they are clear and unambiguous. The
requirements for the interfaces between DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and
existing systems are not yet complete because DOD has not yet determined
the extent to which legacy systems will be replaced and thus

require modification in order to interact with the new system.
Furthermore, DOD is still determining whether the data requirements
provided to the contractor for system design are complete. Finally, about
77 percent of the detailed requirements are difficult to understand, based
on our review of a random sample of the requirements documentation.3 Our
review showed that this documentation did not consistently provide a clear
explanation of the relationships among the parts of each requirement
(business rules; information requirements; and references to regulations,
laws, standards, and so on) or adequately identify the sources of data
required for computations. If requirements are not complete and clear,
their implementation in the system is not likely to meet users' needs.

o  	Third, DOD has not obtained user acceptance of the detailed
requirements. As we have pointed out, when business process changes are
planned, users' needs and expectations must be addressed, or users may not
accept change, which can jeopardize the effort.4 One way to ensure and
demonstrate user acceptance of requirements is to obtain sign-off on the
requirements by end-user representatives. However, although the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) program obtained the user organizations' formal acceptance
of the high-level requirements, the process used to define the detailed
requirements has not resulted in such acknowledgment of agreement on the
requirements. Program officials stated that gaining formal agreement from
some of the user organizations would delay the program and be impractical
because of end users' reluctance to accept a set of joint requirements
that requires end users to make major changes in their current ways of
processing military personnel and pay actions. We have previously observed
this challenge5 and have stated that DOD's

organizational structure and embedded culture work against efforts to
modernize business processes and implement corporate information systems
such as DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) across component lines. Nevertheless, not
attempting to obtain agreement on DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) requirements
increases the risk that users will not accept and use the developed and
deployed system, and that later system rework will be required to make it
function as intended DOD-wide and achieve stated military human capital
management outcomes.

3 The 95 percent confidence interval for this estimate is from 60 to 89
percent. (For more details of the results of the review and the scope and
methodology, see slides 34 and 74 of appendix I.)

4 GAO, Business Process Reengineering Assessment Guide Version 3,
GAO/AIMD-10.1.15 (Washington, D.C.: May 1997).

5 GAO, Defense IRM: Poor Implementation of Management Controls Has Put
Migration Strategy at Risk, GAO/AIMD-98-5 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 20,
1997).

According to DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) officials, a number of actions have
been taken to reduce the risk that users will not accept the system,
including conducting numerous focus groups, workshops, demonstrations, and
presentations explaining how the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) software product
could address DOD's existing personnel/pay problems.

However, DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) officials stated that support for the
system by the services' executives is mixed. For example, the officials
said that (1) Army executives are committed to implementing and using the
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) system because they believe it will address many
problems that the Army currently faces; (2) Air Force officials generally
support the system but say they do not yet know whether the system will
meet all their needs; and (3) Navy and Marine Corps executives are not as
supportive because they are not fully convinced that DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) will be an improvement over their existing systems.

The shortcomings in DOD's efforts to effectively manage DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) requirements are attributable to a number of causes,
including the program's overly schedule-driven approach and the difficulty
of overcoming DOD's long-standing cultural resistance to departmentwide
solutions. These shortcomings leave DOD without adequate assurance that
the requirements will accurately reflect the end users' needs and that the
resulting system design is reflective of validated requirements that will
fully meet DOD's needs.

  DOD Does Not Have a Well-Integrated Management Structure for DIMHRS
  (Personnel/Pay) and Is Not Following All Relevant Supporting Acquisition
  Management Processes

DOD does not have a well-integrated structure for managing DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay), which DOD has described as an integrated program, and it
is not following some key supporting processes for acquiring COTS-based
business systems.

o  	Program responsibility, accountability, and authority are diffused.
Leading organizations ensure that programs are structured to ensure that a
single entity has clear authority, responsibility, and accountability for
the program. For DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), these are spread among three key
stakeholder groups whose respective chains of command do not meet at any
point below the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense levels.
Responsibility for requirements definition rests with a joint requirements
development office, which is accountable through one chain of command.
Responsibility for system acquisition rests with the program office, which
is accountable through another chain of command. Responsibility for
preparing for transition to the new system rests with the end-user
organizations-11 major DOD components reporting through five different
chains of command. This is consistent with our earlier observation that
DOD's organizational structure and embedded culture have not adequately
accommodated an integrated, departmentwide approach to joint systems.6
Without a DOD-wide integrated governance structure for a joint, integrated
program like DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), the risk is increased that the
program will not produce an integrated set of outcomes.

o  	The system has not been defined and designed according to a DOD-wide
integrated enterprise architecture.7 In accordance with the National
Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003,8 DOD has been developing a
departmentwide Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA), and it has been
reviewing some programs, such as DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) with proposed
obligations of funds greater than $1 million, for consistency with

6 GAO/AIMD-98-5.

7 An enterprise architecture is a blueprint for guiding and constraining
the definition and implementation of programs in a way that supports
strategic plans and promotes integration, interoperability, and
optimization of mission performance. This blueprint serves as the common
frame of reference to inform program operational and technological
decision making relative to, for example, what functions will be performed
where, by whom, and using what information. For more information, see GAO,
Information Technology: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Enterprise
Architecture Management (Version 1.1), Executive Guide, GAO-03-584G
(Washington, D.C.: April 2003).

8 Bob Stump National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003, Pub.
L. No. 107-314, S: 1004, 116 Stat. 2458, 2629-2631 (Dec. 2, 2002).

the BEA. In April 2003, the DOD Comptroller certified DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) to be consistent with the BEA on the basis of the program
manager's commitment that the yet-to-be-developed system would be designed
to be consistent with the yet-to-be-developed architecture. To follow
through on this commitment, DOD included a requirement in the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) contract that the systems specification be compatible with
the emerging BEA.

DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) officials recognize that the April 2003
architectural certification is preliminary and stated that DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) will undergo another certification before the system
deployment decision. By that time, however, lengthy and costly design and
development work will have been completed. The real value in having and
using an architecture is knowing during system definition, design, and
development what the larger blueprint for the enterprise is, so that these
can be guided and constrained by this frame of reference. Aligning to the
architecture after the system is designed would require expensive system
rework to address any inconsistencies with the architecture.

o  	Program stakeholders' activities have not been managed according to a
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)-integrated master plan/schedule. An effective
master plan/schedule should allow for the proper scheduling and sequencing
of activities and tasks, allocation of resources, preparation of budgets,
assignment of personnel, and criteria for measuring progress. However, the
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) program plan/schedule is based on the contractor's
and program office's activities and does not include all the activities
that end-user organizations must perform to prepare for DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay), such as the redesign of legacy systems and interfaces,
business process reengineering, and workforce change management. Without a
true master plan/schedule of activities that includes all DOD program
stakeholders, the risk increases that key and dependent events,
activities, and tasks will not be performed as needed, which in turn
increases the risk of schedule slippage and program goal shortfalls.

o  	Some, but not all, best practices associated with acquiring COTS-based
business systems are being followed. An example of a best practice that
DOD is following is to discourage the modification of commercial software
components without thorough justification; DOD's contract includes award
fees that give the contractor incentives to, among other things, minimize
the customization of the COTS software. An example of a best practice that
DOD is not following is to ensure that plans and schedules explicitly
provide for preparing users for the new business processes associated with
the commercial components. DOD does not have an integrated program
plan/schedule that provides for end-user organization

Conclusions

activities that are associated with preparing users for the changes that
the system will introduce. Because it is not following all best practices
associated with acquiring COTS-based systems, DOD is increasing the risk
that DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) will not be successfully implemented and
effectively used.

DOD's efforts to employ an integrated program management approach have not
been effective for a number of reasons, including DOD's longstanding
cultural resistance to departmentwide solutions. Without an integrated
approach and effective processes for managing a program that is intended
to be an integrated solution that maximizes the use of commercially
available software products, DOD increases the risk that the program will
not meet cost, schedule, capability, and outcome goals.

The importance of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) to DOD's ability to manage
military personnel and pay services demands that the department employ
effective processes and governance structures in defining, designing,
developing, and deploying the system to maximize its chances of success.
For DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), however, DOD did not initially perform
important requirements-development steps, and the detailed system
requirements are missing important content. DOD has begun to remedy these
omissions by taking actions such as tracing among requirements documents
and system design documents to ensure alignment, but user organizations'
acceptance of requirements has not occurred. Moreover, although DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) is to be an integrated system, it is not being governed by
integrated tools and approaches, such as an integrated program management
structure, integrated DOD business enterprise architecture, and an
integrated master plan/schedule.

Furthermore, while DOD is appropriately attempting to maximize the use of
COTS products in building DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and is following some
best practices for developing COTS-based systems, others are not being
followed.

The absence of the full complement of effective processes and structures
related to each of these areas can be attributed to a number of causes,
including the program's overly schedule-driven approach and the difficulty
of overcoming DOD's long-standing cultural resistance to departmentwide
solutions. Effectively addressing these shortcomings is essential because
they introduce unnecessary risks that reduce the chances of accomplishing
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) goals on time and within budget.

It is critical that DOD carefully consider the risks caused by each of
these areas of concern and that it appropriately strengthen its management
processes, structures, and plans to effectively minimize these risks. To
do less undermines the chances of timely and successful completion of the
program.

  Recommendations for Executive Action

To assist DOD in strengthening its program management processes,
structures, and plans and thereby increase its chances of successfully
delivering DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), we recommend that you direct the
Assistant Secretary (Networks and Information Integration), the Under
Secretary (Personnel and Readiness), and the Under Secretary
(Comptroller), in collaboration with the leadership of the military
services and DFAS, to take the following six actions to jointly ensure an
integrated, coordinated, and risk-based approach to all DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) definition, design, development, and deployment
activities. At a minimum, this should include

o  	ensuring that joint system requirements are complete and correct, and
that they are acceptable to user organizations;

o  	establishing a DOD-wide integrated governance structure for DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) (1) that vests an executive-level organization or entity
representing the interests of all program stakeholders-including the Joint
Requirements and Integration Office, the Joint Program Management Office,
the services, and DFAS-with responsibility, accountability, and authority
for the entire DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) program and (2) that ensures that
all stakeholder interests and positions are appropriately heard and
considered during program reviews and before key program decisions;

o  	ensuring that the degree of consistency between DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
and the evolving DOD-wide business enterprise architecture is continuously
analyzed and that material inconsistencies between the two, both potential
and actual, are disclosed at all program reviews and decision points and
in program budget submissions, along with any associated system risks and
steps to mitigate these risks;

o  	developing and implementing a DOD-wide, integrated master
plan/schedule of activities that extends to all DOD program stakeholders;

o  	ensuring that all relevant acquisition management best practices
associated with COTS-based systems are appropriately followed; and

o

  Agency Comments
  and Our Evaluation

ensuring that an event-driven, risk-based approach that adequately
considers factors other than the contract schedule continues to be used in
managing DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

In written comments on a draft of this report (reprinted in app. II), the
Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness stated that DOD
largely agrees with the thrust of our recommendations, and that it is
already following, to the extent practicable, the kind of acquisition best
practices embodied in them. The department also made two overall comments
about the report and provided a number of detailed comments pertaining to
five of our six recommendations.

The first overall comment was that our espousal of certain system
acquisition management best practices resulted in incongruity among our
recommendations. In particular, DOD indicated that our recognition that
DOD is appropriately limiting modification of COTS products (a best
practice) is incongruous with our recommendation that requirements be
acceptable to user organizations (another best practice). It further
stated that if it acted on all comments that it received on requirements
from all sources, as it suggested we were recommending, then this would
result in excessive modification to the COTS product. We do not agree with
DOD's points; we suggest that a careful reading of our recommendations
would show that the department has not correctly interpreted and
characterized those recommendations that pertain to this overall comment.
Specifically, our report does not recommend that DOD act on all comments
obtained from all sources, regardless of the impact and consequences of
doing so. Rather, the report contains complementary recommendations for
ensuring that the system requirements are acceptable to user organizations
and discouraging changes to the COTS product unless the life-cycle costs
and benefits justify making them. In short, our recommendations concerning
system requirements are intended to provide DOD with the principles and
rules that it should apply in executing a requirements-acceptance process
that permits all stakeholder interests and positions to be heard,
considered, and resolved in the context of what makes economic sense.
While DOD's comments note that a process was followed to screen out user
inputs that, for example, necessitated changes to the COTS product, this
process did not provide for the effective resolution of such inputs, as
shown in our report by certain user organizations' comments: specifically,
that their involvement in defining detailed requirements was limited, that
their comments on these requirements were not fully resolved, and that
they were not willing to sign off on the requirements as sufficient to
meet their needs. This lack of resolution is important because not
attempting to

obtain some level of stakeholder acceptance of requirements increases the
risk that the system will not adequately meet users' needs, that users
will not adopt the system, and that later system rework will be required
to rectify this situation.

The second overall comment was that the department was already employing
acquisition management best practices, to the extent practicable, and that
the management process for the program is innovative and groundbreaking
for DOD, going far beyond what is required by the department's
regulations. For example, the department commented that the
system-requirements documentation far exceeds that which has been
available for any other system effort. We do not dispute DOD's comment
about efforts on this system relative to other system acquisitions,
because our review's objectives and approach did not extend to comparing
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) with other DOD acquisitions. However, our review
did address DOD's use of key acquisition management best practices on
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), and in this regard we support the department's
recognition of the importance of these practices. In our report, we have
provided a balanced message by recognizing instances where best practices
were being followed, such as when DOD began tracing detailed system
requirements to the system design following inquiries that we made during
the course of our review. However, we do not agree that at the time we
concluded our work DOD was following all relevant and practicable best
practices; examples of these practices are cited in our report and
discussed below in our response to DOD's detailed comments on our
individual recommendations.

In its comments specific to our six recommendations, the department agreed
without further comment with one recommendation (to develop and implement
a DOD-wide, integrated master plan/schedule of activities that extends to
all DOD program stakeholders). In addition, it either partially agreed or
partially disagreed with our other five recommendations, and it provided
detailed comments on each. Generally, DOD's areas of disagreement relate
to its view that it is already performing the activities that we
recommend.

o  	DOD partially concurred with our recommendation to ensure that joint
system requirements are complete and correct and acceptable to user
organizations. In this regard, DOD stated that it has already taken great
pains to ensure that the requirements are complete and correct, although
its comments stated that this assurance has occurred "to the extent that
any documentation [of requirements] this massive can be correct." It also

stated that the requirements are fully traceable to the system design, and
that the high-level requirements were validated in accordance with DOD
regulations. It added that it has taken various steps to gain users'
acceptance of the system, including a change management process,
briefings, and prototype demonstrations.

We do not disagree that DOD has taken important steps to meet the goals of
requirements completeness and correctness. Likewise, we do not disagree
that since receiving our draft report for comment, the department might
have completed the important requirements-to-design traceability steps
that it began in response to our inquiries, which we describe in our
report. However, DOD's comments contain no evidence to show that it has
addressed the limitations in the requirements' completeness and
correctness that we cite in the report, such as those relating to the
interface and data requirements, and they do not address the
understandability issues we found relative to 77 percent of the detailed
requirements. Moreover, DOD stated in its comments that its latest program
review revealed 606 business process comments and 17 interface comments
that it deemed noncritical, although it noted that they were still being
analyzed.

We also do not disagree that DOD has taken steps to gain user acceptance
of the system. However, they did not gain acceptance of the detailed
requirements that the system is to be designed to meet, which is the focus
of our recommendation. As we point out in the report, not attempting to
obtain agreement on the detailed requirements increases the risk that
users will not adopt the system as developed and deployed, and that later
system rework will be needed to address this.

o  	DOD partially concurred with our recommendation that it continuously
analyze the degree of consistency between DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and the
evolving DOD-wide BEA so that the risks of material inconsistencies are
understood and addressed. In doing so, DOD stated that the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) requirements comprise the military personnel and pay
portion of the architecture and that as one of the first major systems
developed using all the principles of this architecture, DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) is and will remain fully consistent with it. We do not
agree with DOD's comments that the system is consistent with the BEA. As
we state in our report, DOD could not provide us with documented,
verifiable analysis demonstrating this consistency and forming the basis
for the DOD Comptroller's April 2003 certification of this consistency.
Rather, we were told that this certification was based on the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) program manager's stated commitment to be consistent at
some future

point. However, as we note in our report, the real value of an
architecture

is that it provides the necessary context for guiding and constraining

system investments in a way that promotes interoperability and minimizes

overlap and duplication. Without it, expensive system rework is likely to

be needed to achieve these outcomes. As we also note in our report, the

absence of verifiable analysis of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) architectural

compliance was in part due to the state of the BEA, which we have

reported as not being well-defined and missing important content.9

Recognizing this, as well as the pressing need for DIMHRS's

(Personnel/Pay) promised capabilities, our recommendation calls for

ongoing analysis of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and the BEA to understand

the risks of designing and developing the system outside the context of a

well-defined architecture.

o  	DOD partially disagreed with our recommendation that it establish a
DOD-wide governance structure in which responsibility, accountability, and
authority for the entire program are vested in an executive-level
organization or entity representing the interests of all program
stakeholders. In doing so, the department described the roles,
responsibilities, and authorities for various program stakeholders;
however, it did not explain its reason for not agreeing with the
recommendation, and only one of its comments bears relevance to our
recommendation. Specifically, it commented that the Under Secretary of
Defense (Personnel and Readiness) has full responsibility and
accountability for the program. We do not agree. As we state in our
report, DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) is a DOD-wide program involving three
distinct stakeholder groups whose respective chains of command do not meet
at any point below the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense levels.
Thus, we concluded that responsibility, accountability, and authority for
the program are diffused, with responsibility for developing functional
requirements resting with the Joint Requirements and Integration Office,
responsibility for system acquisition resting with the Joint Program
Management Office, and responsibility for preparing for the transition to
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) resting with 11 major end-user organizations. Under
this structure, only the Joint Requirements and Integration Office is
accountable to the Under Secretary, and the two distinct other stakeholder
groups are not accountable to the Under Secretary.

9 GAO, DOD Business Systems Modernization: Limited Progress in Development
of Business Enterprise Architecture and Oversight of Information
Technology Investments,

GAO-04-731R (Washington, D.C.: May 17, 2004).

This means, as we state in the report, that no single DOD entity is
positioned to exercise continuous leadership and direction over the entire
program.

o  	The department also partially disagreed with our recommendation to
follow all relevant acquisition management best practices associated with
COTS-based systems. According to DOD's comments, all of these best
practices are currently being followed, including the three that we cite
in our report as not being followed: (1) ensuring that plans explicitly
provide for preparing users for the impact that the business processes
embedded in the commercial components will have on their respective roles
and responsibilities, (2) proactively managing the introduction and
adoption of changes to how users will be expected to use the system to
execute their jobs, and (3) ensuring that project plans explicitly provide
for the necessary time and resources for integrating commercial components
with legacy systems. In this regard, the department stated that the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) program had documented every change in current practices
and policies that will be required for the military services, as well as
future practices and policies, and that these were fully vetted through
the functional user community. It also described a number of activities
that it has undertaken to prepare and train users in the COTS product and
other aspects of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

We do not dispute whether DOD has performed activities intended to
facilitate the implementation of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay). However, the best
practices that we identified as not being followed, which form the basis
of our recommendation, are focused on effectively planning for the full
complement of activities that are needed to prepare an organization for
the institutional and individual changes that COTS-based system solutions
introduce. Such planning is intended to ensure, among other things, that
key change management activities, including the dependencies among these
activities, are defined and agreed to by stakeholders, including ensuring
that adequate resources and realistic time frames are established to
accomplish them. In this regard, DOD agreed in its comments that it does
not have an integrated master plan/schedule for the program, which is an
essential tool for capturing the results of the proactive change
management planning that the best practices and our recommendation
advocate. Both published research and our experience in evaluating the
acquisition and implementation of COTS-based system solutions show that
the absence of well-planned, proactive organizational and individual
change management efforts can cause these system efforts to fail.

o  	The department partially disagreed with our last recommendation to
adopt a more event-driven, risk-based approach to managing DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) that adequately considers factors other than the contract
schedule, stating that it is currently using an event-driven, risk-based
approach and revising the schedule when necessary. We support DOD's
comment, as it indicates that DOD has decided to begin following such an
approach. However, during the course of our work this was not the case.
For example, we observed at that time that the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
program intended to accelerate its deployment schedule to meet an
externally imposed deadline and that it was not until we raised concerns
about the associated risks of doing so, as well as the absence of
effective strategies to mitigate these risks, in an earlier draft of the
briefing included in this report, that the department changed its plans.
Also during the course of our work, we observed that program activities
were truncated or performed concurrently in order to meet established
deadlines. For example, as we describe in our report, data requirements
(which are derived from higher-level information needs) were provided to
the contractor before information needs were fully defined because the
contractor needed these data requirements to complete the system design on
schedule. It was this kind of focus on schedule that led to our
recommendation to adopt a more event-driven, risk-based approach. However,
in light of DOD's comment that it intends to do so, we have slightly
modified our recommendation to recognize this decision.

All our recommendations are aimed at reducing the risk of failure on this
important program, which we and DOD agree is critical to the department's
ability to effectively manage military personnel and pay. Furthermore,
DOD's comments show that it agrees with us on the importance of taking an
approach to the program that is based on the kinds of management processes
and structures that we recommend, and the department appears committed to
following such an approach. Following our recommendations will help the
department to do so and thereby avoid unnecessary risks. As we state in
the report, careful consideration of the areas of concern that we raise is
critical to improving the chances of timely and successful completion of
the program.

We are sending copies of this report to the House and Senate Armed
Services and Appropriations Committees; the House Committee on Government
Reform; the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs; and the Director,
Office of Management and Budget. In addition, the report will be available
at no charge on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

Should you or your offices have any questions on the matters discussed in
this report, please contact Randolph Hite at (202) 512-3439 or Gregory C.
Wilshusen at (202) 512-3317; we can also be reached by e-mail at
[email protected] or [email protected]. Other contacts and key contributors
to this report are listed in appendix III.

Sincerely yours,

Randolph C. Hite Director, Information Technology Architecture and Systems
Issues

Gregory C. Wilshusen Acting Director, Defense Capabilities and Management
Issues

                     Appendix I: Briefing to Department of
                      Defense Officials, November 30, 2004

  DOD Systems Modernization: Management of Integrated Military Human Capital
  Program Needs Additional Improvements

    Briefing to Department of Defense Officials November 30, 2004

                                    Overview

Introduction Objectives Results in Brief Background Findings:

o  Requirements Management

o  Program Management Structure and Processes Conclusions Recommendations
Attachment I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

                                  Introduction

As we have previously reported, the Department of Defense (DOD) faces
serious military personnel and payroll-processing problems, dating back to
the early 1990s.1 According to DOD, these problems affect its ability to
properly pay military personnel and to monitor and track them to, from,
and within their duty stations. We recently reported that these problems
continue today, particularly for Army Reserve and National Guard troops
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.2

These problems can be traced, in part, to such causes as

o  hundreds of supporting information technology (IT) systems, many of
which perform the same tasks and store duplicate data;

o  the need for manual data reconciliation, correction, and entry across
these nonintegrated systems; and

o  the large number of data translations and system interfaces.

1GAO, Financial Management: Defense's System for Army Military Payroll Is
Unreliable, GAO/AIMD-93-32 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 30, 1993).

2GAO, Military Pay: Army Reserve Soldiers Mobilized to Active Duty
Experienced Significant Pay Problems, GAO-04-911 (Washington, D.C.: Aug.
20, 2004), and Military Pay: Army National Guard Personnel Mobilized to
Active Duty Experienced Significant Pay Problems, GAO-04-89 (Washington,
D.C.: Nov. 13, 2003).

                                  Introduction

The Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System (DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay)) is intended to address these problems, with particular
focus on

o  providing joint-theater commanders with accurate and timely human
capital information;

o  providing active service members, reservists, and National Guard
members with timely and accurate pay and benefits, especially when they
are performing in theaters of operation or combat; and

o  providing an integrated military personnel and payroll system that uses
standard data definitions across all services and service components,
thereby reducing multiple data entries, system maintenance, pay
discrepancies, and reconciliations of personnel and pay information.

Among other things, the new system is also intended to support DOD's
efforts to produce accurate and complete financial statements.

                                  Introduction

DOD plans to acquire and deploy DIMHRS in three phases:

o  DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)-military personnel hiring, promotion,
retirement, etc., and pay;

o  DIMHRS (Manpower)-workforce planning, analysis, utilization, etc.; and

o  DIMHRS (Training).

DOD accepted the design of the first system phase-DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay)-in November 2004 and is now proceeding with development of
this system phase. Deployment to the Army and the Defense Finance and
Accounting Service (DFAS) is to begin in the second quarter of fiscal year
2006, followed by deployment to the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.

                                   Objectives

In view of the significance of the DIMHRS program to DOD's ability to
manage military personnel and pay services, we initiated a review under
the authority of the Comptroller General. Our objectives were to determine

1. whether DOD has effective processes in place for managing the
definition of the requirements for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and

2.	whether DOD has established an integrated program management structure
for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and is following effective processes for
acquiring a system based on commercial software components.

To accomplish our objectives, we interviewed officials from relevant
organizations, analyzed program management documentation and activities,
and reviewed relevant DOD analyses. Further details on our scope and
methodology are given in attachment I to this appendix.

Our work was performed from January through November 2004, in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards.

                         Results in Brief: Objective 1

DOD's management of the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) requirements definition has
recently improved, but key aspects of requirements definition remain a
challenge. In particular, DOD has begun taking steps to ensure that the
system requirements and the system design are consistent with each other.
However, DOD

o  has not ensured that the detailed requirements are complete and
understandable and

o  has not obtained user acceptance of the detailed requirements.

The requirements definition challenges are attributable to a number of
causes including the program's overly schedule-driven approach and the
difficulty of overcoming DOD's long-standing cultural resistance to
departmentwide solutions.

These challenges increase the risk that the delivered system's
capabilities will not fully meet DOD's needs.

                         Results in Brief: Objective 2

DOD does not have a well-integrated management structure for DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) and is not following all relevant supporting acquisition
management processes. In particular,

o  program responsibility, accountability, and authority are diffused;

o  the system has not been defined and designed according to a DOD-wide
integrated enterprise architecture;

o  program stakeholders' activities have not been managed according to a
master plan/schedule that integrates all stakeholder activities; and

o  the program is following some, but not all, best practices associated
with acquiring business systems based on commercially available software.

Without an integrated approach and effective processes for managing a
program that is intended to be an integrated solution, DOD has increased
the risk that the program will not meet cost, schedule, capability, and
outcome goals.

Results in Brief:

                                Recommendations

To assist DOD in effectively managing DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), we are
making six recommendations to the Secretary of Defense aimed at ensuring
that DOD follows an integrated, coordinated, and risk-based program
approach and thereby increases its chances of successfully delivering
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

                                   Background

Program Chronology

June 1996. Defense Science Board Task Force on Military Personnel
Information Management recommended that DOD "move to a single, all-service
and allcomponent, fully integrated personnel and pay system with common
core software."

July 1997. Deputy Secretary of Defense established the Joint Requirements
and Integration Office (JR&IO) and assigned it responsibility for
functional oversight of DIMHRS and appointed the Navy as the "acquisition
agent."

February 1998. The Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness
(P&R) and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information
Integration (NII)3 approved the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) program to proceed
into the concept refinement phase (i.e., alternatives analysis).

May 1999. DOD's Institute for Defense Analysis analyzed alternative
systems solutions, reaffirmed the decision to base DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
on commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) software, and made a number of
suggestions, including the need to favor the use of COTS "out of the box"
to hold down costs.

3 At that time, this executive's title was Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence.

                                   Background

October 2000. Assistant Secretary of Defense (NII) approved the program to
proceed into the technology development phase (i.e., requirements
definition).

March 2001. The Navy selected a commercial software product to serve as
the foundation for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) application software.

May 2002. The Navy issued a request for proposals for development and
integration of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

June 2002. DOD responded to congressional questions about the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) program management structure and requests for DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) funding from multiple DOD organizations.

September 2002. The Navy awarded five contracts and began a competitive
acquisition process to select one of the five to develop and integrate
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

December 2002. The five contractors submitted final proposals.

May 2003. Assistant Secretary of Defense (NII) approved the program to
proceed into the system development and demonstration phase (i.e.,
software development, integration, testing, etc.).

                                   Background

September 2003. The Navy awarded the development and integration contract.

March 2004. DOD established a baseline version of the detailed
requirements for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and provided it to the development
and integration contractor for use in designing DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

November 2004. DOD accepted the contractor's design of DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) and authorized the contractor to proceed with development
of the system.

                                   Background

DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) Description

The DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) system is to be Web based and maximize the use
of COTS software. The contract includes award fees that give the
contractor incentives to, among other things, meet the contract schedule
and minimize customization of the COTS software.

DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) was designed in four parts. DOD has accepted all
four parts and authorized the contractor to develop the system in
accordance with the accepted design.

According to DOD officials, DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) will be the largest
personnel system in the world in terms of the number of people it serves
and transactions it processes.

                                   Background

Costs

DOD does not currently have a total life-cycle cost estimate for DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay). According to JPMO officials, JPMO's costs through fiscal
year 2003 and projected through fiscal year 2009 are about $601 million:

o  $244.7 million obligated during fiscal years 1998 through 2003 and

o  $356.6 million required for fiscal years 2004 through 2009.

However, JR&IO and JPMO officials stated that these amounts do not include
user organization costs; JPMO originally estimated these costs to be about
$350 million, but it is now reevaluating these and other cost estimates as
part of its efforts to update the program's economic analysis.

Additionally, the officials stated that the $601 million does not include
JR&IO's actual and estimated costs of $153 million through fiscal year
2009 for requirements definition activities, business process
reengineering planning, enterprise architecture development, and other
activities pertaining to management and analysis of the human resources
domain. According to JR&IO officials, this $153 million consists of $72.5
million obligated during fiscal years 1998 through 2003 and $80.4 million
required for fiscal years 2004 through 2009.

                                   Background

Benefits

DOD estimated that after DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) is fully operational,
including implementation of associated business process improvements and
termination of legacy systems, the system will address DOD's long-standing
military personnel and payroll processing problems and result in
productivity improvements and reduced IT operating and maintenance costs.4

4 According to DOD, mission performance improvements, not cost savings,
are the rationale for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

DOD's management of the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) requirements definition has
recently improved, but key aspects of requirements definition remain a
challenge. Requirements are the foundation for designing, developing, and
testing a system. Our experience indicates that incorrect or incomplete
requirements are a common cause of systems not meeting their cost,
schedule, or performance goals. Disciplined processes and controls for
defining and managing requirements are defined in published models and
guides, such as the Capability Maturity Models developed by Carnegie
Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute (SEI), and standards
developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

In managing DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) requirements, DOD has begun taking
steps to ensure that the system requirements and the system design are
consistent with each other. However, DOD

o  has not ensured that the detailed requirements are complete and
understandable and

o  has not obtained user acceptance of the detailed requirements.

These challenges increase the risk that the delivered system's
capabilities will not fully meet DOD's needs.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

DOD has recently begun performing important steps to better ensure
alignment among high-level requirements, detailed requirements, and the
system design.

According to SEI guidance, requirements should be completely and correctly
incorporated into the system design. As we and others have previously
reported, addressing requirements issues during requirements definition
and system design is considerably less expensive and quicker than fixing
problems during and after development.5

5See, for example, Karl E. Wiegers, Software Requirements (1999), p.15,
and GAO, DOD Business Systems Modernization: Billions Continue to Be
Invested with Inadequate Management Oversight and Accountability,
GAO-04-615 (Washington, D.C.: May 27, 2004).

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

The DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) ORD defines the high-level capabilities for
satisfying DOD's mission needs.

o  The ORD lists the functional processes, information needs, and
performance parameters that the system is to support; an example of a
functional process is "promote enlisted member personnel."

The detailed requirements include "use cases," which are detailed
descriptions of the activities that the system and the end users must
perform and data needed to accomplish these activities.

o  For example, the functional process "promote enlisted personnel"
includes multiple use cases, such as "record enlisted member's eligibility
for promotion." Each use case includes (1) business rules describing the
processing steps for accomplishing the use case, such as steps for
determining which members meet the time in grade/time in service
requirement for promotion; (2) references to the applicable statutes,
policies, guidance, or regulations that govern the use case; and (3) a
list of the information needed to perform the use case, such as each
person's rank, occupation code, and promotion recommendation.

In addition, the use cases incorporate process improvements that are to
introduce efficiencies and to standardize personnel and pay processing
DOD-wide.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

However, when DOD accepted the first two parts of the system design, it
had not traced between the detailed requirements and the design. Rather,
DOD required the contractor to base the system design only on the
high-level requirements defined in the ORD, and DOD provided detailed
requirements for information only purposes.

According to JPMO officials, the contract was written in this way to
provide the contractor with maximum flexibility to design the system
according to the capabilities of the COTS product and thereby reduce
system development and maintenance costs. Nonetheless, JR&IO officials
also stated that the detailed requirements for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
should be the basis of the system design.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

In addition, DOD did not, until recently, trace between ORD requirements
and detailed requirements. As a consequence, we told DOD during the course
of our review that relevant financial and accounting standards were
missing from the detailed requirements, even though they had been included
in the ORD.

According to the ORD, the system will comply with requirements for
personnel and payroll feeder systems contained in the Federal Financial
Management Improvement Act of 1996, the Chief Financial Officers Act of
1990, the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act of 1982, and the most
current Joint Financial Management Improvement Program (JFMIP) Program
Management Office (PMO) requirements.6 The details that correspond to
these statutory and regulatory requirements are found in the JFMIP PMO
standard for human resources and payroll financial systems.7

6JFMIP is a cooperative undertaking of the Treasury Department, Office of
Management and Budget, Office of Personnel Management, GAO, and others to
improve financial management practices in government. The PMO, managed by
the Executive Director of the JFMIP, using funds provided by the Chief
Financial Officers Council agencies, is responsible for the testing and
certification of COTS core financial systems for use by federal agencies
and coordinating the development and publication of functional
requirements for financial management systems.

7JFMIP, JFMIP Human Resources & Payroll Systems Requirements, JFMIP
SR-99-5 (April 1999).

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  The JFMIP PMO standard is important because it contains requirements
associated with producing accurate and complete payroll data for the
financial statements, which is relevant to DOD's efforts to obtain
"clean," or "unqualified," audit opinions on its financial statements.8

o  An example of the JFMIP PMO requirements is functionality to process
prior period, current, and future period pay actions, on the basis of
effective dates.

8A clean, or unqualified, opinion is given when an auditor deems the
financial statements to be accurate and complete, with no qualifying
statements.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  After we told DOD of the missing requirements, JR&IO officials
undertook an analysis of the 196 JFMIP PMO human resources and payroll
requirements9 and have stated that this analysis has allowed them to
ensure that DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) will meet 170 of the 196 requirements
and that the remaining requirements are not applicable to military human
resource and payroll systems. They also stated that all applicable
requirements are now documented in the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) detailed
requirements database.

9JFMIP SR-99-5. According to the JFMIP PMO, these requirements are not
applicable to noncivilian human resources and payroll systems, such as
military personnel and foreign national systems. However, DOD
administratively requires compliance with these JFMIP PMO requirements in
DFAS's Guide to Federal Requirements for Financial Management Systems,
DFAS 7900.4-G Version 4.1.1 (December 2002). The DFAS Guide also states
that "Users must exercise their own knowledge and judgment of the
differences between military and civilian personnel/payroll systems in
applying these requirements to the different systems."

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  According to JPMO officials, tracing the detailed financial
requirements to the design was not done sooner because the COTS software
product being used is certified as JFMIP PMO compliant. However, JFMIP PMO
certification extends only to the core financial module of this software
(i.e., general ledger, funds control, accounts receivable, accounts
payable, cost management, and reporting); it does not include the two
modules used for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)-human resources and payroll.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  In addition, as we have reported, even if JFMIP PMO had certified the
human resources and payroll modules of the COTS software product,
certification by itself does not ensure that systems based on this
software will be compliant with the goals of the Federal Financial
Management Improvement Act, as JFMIP has made clear, and does not ensure
that systems based on this software will provide reliable, useful, and
timely data for day-to-day management.10 Other important factors affecting
compliance with federal financial management system requirements and the
effectiveness of an implemented COTS system include how the software
package has been configured to work in the agency's environment, whether
any customization is made to the software, the success of converting data
from legacy systems to new systems, and the quality of transaction data in
the feeder systems.

10GAO, Financial Management: Improved Financial Systems Are Key to FFMIA
Compliance, GAO-05-20 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 1, 2004), and Business
Modernization: NASA's Integrated Financial Management Program Does Not
Fully Address Agency's External Reporting Issues, GAO-04-151 (Washington,
D.C.: Nov. 21, 2003).

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

To their credit, JR&IO and JPMO officials have begun tracing between the
detailed requirements and the design, including the financial standards.
As of late November 2004, they told us that this tracing had identified
about 630 discrepancies that may require modification to the detailed
requirements or the design. They stated that they plan to complete this
tracing by the end of February 2005.

Until DOD completes tracing both backward (from the design back to the
detailed requirements and the ORD) and forward (from the ORD forward to
the detailed requirements and the design), the risk is increased that the
requirements and design are not complete and correct.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

Detailed requirements are missing important content and are difficult to
understand.

According to SEI, requirements should be complete, correct, clear, and
understandable; IEEE standards state that requirements should be
communicated in a structured manner to ensure that the customers (i.e.,
end users) and the system's developers reach a common understanding of
them.

For DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), certain requirements are missing from the
detailed requirements. Specifically, the interface requirements remain
incomplete, and questions exist as to the completeness of the data
requirements. Finally, some of the use cases that provide the detailed
requirements are unclear and ambiguous, making them difficult to
understand. Each of these three areas is discussed in greater detail
below.

If requirements are not complete and clear, their implementation in the
system design may not meet users' needs, and it will be unnecessarily
difficult for DOD to test the system effectively and determine whether
system requirements have been met.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

First, the requirements for the interfaces between DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
and existing systems are not yet complete. According to SEI, requirements
for internal and external interfaces should be sufficiently defined to
permit these interfaces to be designed and interfacing systems to be
modified.

For example, DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) will be required to interface with
DOD's accounting systems and other systems, such as DOD's travel system,
either by providing DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) data for these systems or by
receiving accounting data from them. DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) interfaces
must also be designed to ensure compliance with applicable JFMIP PMO
financial system requirements and applicable federal accounting standards.
These interface requirements must be completed before the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) system can be fully deployed.

To complete the interface requirements, officials representing JPMO and
the user organizations' DIMHRS offices told us that they must identify
which of the legacy systems will be partially replaced, and thus will
require modification in order to interface with the new system. JPMO
officials stated that although DOD accepted the system design in November
2004, a significant amount of work remained to fully address DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) interface issues by the user organizations.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

Second, the data requirements initially provided to the contractor for the
system design had not been aligned with the users' information needs that
were included in the detailed requirements. According to SEI, the data
required to meet users' information needs must be defined so that the
system can be properly designed and developed. However, JR&IO officials
told us that they had not fully defined information needs when users were
asked to identify the data requirements, along with the legacy systems
that are the best sources of the required data. The contractor needed
these data requirements to complete the system design on schedule.

o  DOD recently began comparing the data requirements provided to the
contractor with the users' information needs developed by JR&IO. JR&IO
officials stated that they expect to complete this work in February 2005.
Until this task is completed, DOD will not know whether revisions will be
needed to the system design to ensure that users' information needs are
met and that the correct data are later migrated to the new system.

o  JPMO officials also stated that when DOD accepted the system design in
November 2004, a significant amount of work remained for the user
organizations to fully address DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) data issues.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

Third, some of the detailed requirements are unclear and ambiguous, making
them difficult to understand. According to SEI, requirements should be
clear and understandable. When requirements are ambiguous, their meaning
is open to varying interpretations, which increases the risk that the
implementation of the requirements will not meet users' needs.

o  We reviewed a random sample of the documentation for 40 of 424 use
cases (detailed requirements): 20 of 284 pay use cases and 20 of 140
personnel use cases. Our review showed that this documentation did not
consistently provide a clear explanation of the relationships among the
parts of each requirement (business rules, information requirements, and
references) or adequately identify the sources of data required for
computations.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  Based on our sample, an estimated 22 percent of use cases cite "P&R
guidance" (that is, guidance from the Office of the Under Secretary for
P&R) as a reference to support the need for a business rule, either alone
or along with references to DOD policies.11 According to JR&IO officials,
this note indicates that the business rule includes steps not currently
required by DOD's policies, which have been added either to take advantage
of "out-of-the-box" COTS capabilities or to implement a best practice.
However, when P&R guidance is cited, the use cases do not explain whether
an out-of-the-box capability or best practice is intended.

11 This estimate is a weighted average of the sample results for the two
categories of use cases shown in the table on slide 34. A weighted average
is used because the population of pay use cases was sampled at a rate
different from the population of personnel use cases.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  In addition, when both P&R guidance and existing policies are cited,
the use case does not explain which rules are based on P&R guidance and
which are based on existing policies. These ambiguities make it difficult
for stakeholders to understand the business rule and its rationale. (This
point is further discussed in the following section on end users'
acceptance of requirements.) According to JR&IO officials, such ambiguity
was resolved via communication between JR&IO and JPMO officials followed
by JPMO officials' communicating with the contractor.

o  Estimates of the extent of use case problems and associated confidence
intervals are summarized on the next slide.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

JR&IO officials agreed that the clarity of the use cases could be improved
but stated that the use cases provide a greater level of detail than DOD
normally provides for a COTS-based system. JR&IO officials added that they
developed the use cases to support the design and development of the
system rather than to communicate the detailed requirements to the user
organizations. In this regard, officials representing the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) development and integration contractor stated that the use
cases are providing useful information for designing the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) system.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

DOD has not obtained user acceptance of detailed requirements. According
to SEI, users' needs and expectations must be used in defining
requirements. Furthermore, according to our guidance, when business
process changes are planned, users' needs and expectations must be
addressed, or users may not accept change, which can jeopardize the
effort.12 One way to ensure and demonstrate user acceptance of
requirements is to obtain sign-off on the requirements by authorized
end-user representatives.

To its credit, JR&IO obtained the user organizations' formal acceptance of
the ORD. However, the process used to define the detailed requirements
(specifically, the use cases) has not resulted in user acceptance.

o  End-user representatives stated that their involvement in the
definition of the use cases was limited.

o  End users' comments on the use cases were not fully resolved.

o  End users are not being asked to approve the detailed requirements.

Each of these three issues is discussed in greater detail below.

12 GAO, Business Process Reengineering Assessment Guide Version 3,
GAO/AIMD-10.1.15 (Washington, D.C.: May 1997).

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

First, JR&IO developed the use cases with the help of contractors and
representative end users (personnel and payroll specialists) from the
end-users' stakeholder organizations. However, according to these
representatives, their role in defining the use cases was limited. They
stated that they principally performed research, identified references,
and explained how their legacy environments currently process personnel
and pay transactions and that they had limited influence in deciding the
content of the use cases.

In response, JR&IO officials stated that many of the user representatives
were lower-level personnel who were not empowered to represent their
components in making decisions about requirements.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

Second, to obtain users' comments on the use cases, JR&IO provided the
endusers' organizations with the use cases and other documentation for
comment, but this process did not resolve all of the comments.

o 	An initial set of use cases was reviewed by hundreds of individual end
users (personnel and payroll specialists), resulting in thousands of
comments.

o 	Around October 2003, JR&IO provided a second set of use cases to the
end users (as well as to the development and integration contractor),
including modifications to reflect changes suggested by users based on
their first set of comments. The end users provided about 7,000 comments
on the second set of use cases.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  In March 2004, JR&IO established a baseline version of the use cases
and provided this version to the development and integration contractor in
order to meet the contractor's schedule. At that time, JR&IO had concurred
with about 400 of the 7,000 comments and modified the use cases in
response, but it had not completed its analysis of all 7,000 comments.

o  JR&IO then established a change control process for making further
modifications to the baseline use cases. According to JR&IO officials, as
of the end of October 2004, 703 change requests had been submitted: 163
had been approved, 48 had been disapproved, and the remaining 492 were
still under review.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  According to end-user representatives from each of the services, the
use cases were difficult to understand because they were shared in a
piecemeal fashion and did not include sufficient detail. Furthermore, they
said that JR&IO responses to comments were generally brief and often did
not provide sufficient explanation-for example, "The Business Rule
captures this requirement. Action: No change required..." and "The comment
is out of scope. Action: No action required." As a result, the end-user
representatives stated that they often did not understand the reasoning
behind the decisions.

o  JR&IO officials stated that users might have had difficulty with
understanding the use cases because they were defined in terms of what
processes the system would perform as opposed to how the processes would
be performed. This approach is consistent with best practices (as
discussed later in this briefing) and with JR&IO's stated intention to
discourage the definition of processes in terms of existing systems and
processes, as well as to allow the development of reengineered joint
processes using the native capabilities of the COTS software to the
maximum extent. However, best practices also require that explanations of
business rules and their rationale be complete and understandable by end
users.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  JR&IO officials further stated that many of the end users' comments
were not substantive (e.g., a minor change needed in the citation of a
regulation); many were duplicative, and some addressed issues outside of
personnel/pay functionality, such as training and manpower. In addition,
most were not prioritized.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

Third, JR&IO does not intend to gain formal agreement on the detailed
requirements from the end-users' organizations, although it did obtain
such agreement on the ORD. JR&IO officials stated that gaining formal
agreement from some of the users' organizations would delay the program
and be impractical because of some user organizations allegiance to their
legacy systems and processes.

o 	We observed this challenge in a previous review, where we stated that
DOD's organizational structure and embedded culture work against efforts
to modernize business processes and implement corporate information
systems such as DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) across component lines.13

o 	Our prior work has also shown that proactively preparing end users for
the business process and role changes embedded in COTS products is an
acquisition management best practice.14

13 GAO, Defense IRM: Poor Implementation of Management Controls Has Put
Migration Strategy at Risk, GAO/AIMD-98-5 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 20,
1997).

14 GAO, Information Technology: DOD's Acquisition Policies and Guidance
Need to Incorporate Additional Best Practices and Controls, GAO-04-722
(Washington, D.C.: July 30, 2004).

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o 	Nevertheless, not attempting to obtain agreement on DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) requirements increases the risk that users will not accept
and use the developed and deployed system, and that later system rework
will be required to make it function as intended and achieve stated
military human capital management outcomes.

Officials representing the DIMHRS offices are not in full agreement with
JR&IO officials on the state of the requirements, as the following slides
show.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

Officials representing each of the DIMHRS management offices (Army, Air
Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and DFAS) stated that their organizations are
not currently willing to sign off on the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) detailed
requirements as being sufficient to meet their organizations' military
personnel and pay needs. These officials stated that they do not yet know
what the gaps are between the functionality provided by their current
systems and the functionality to be provided by DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

o  Officials representing the Army's DIMHRS office stated that they do not
yet know whether the requirements are adequate to enable the Army to
replace a number of its existing systems with DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

o  Officials representing the Air Force's DIMHRS office stated that the
requirements are defined at a very high level and are subject to
interpretation, and as a result, they are unable to determine whether
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) will meet all the Air Force's requirements.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  Officials representing the Navy's DIMHRS office stated that their
concerns about the adequacy of the detailed requirements relate
principally to the issue of not knowing which of the functions provided by
the Navy's legacy systems will not be provided by DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

o  Officials representing the Marine Corps' DIMHRS office stated that they
do not believe that the requirements adequately address service
specificity or the automation of manual processes. These officials stated
that the Marine Corps has not been able to determine what functionality
the system contains versus the functionality contained in its legacy
systems. They stated that this information is needed to enable them to
modify legacy systems to ensure that needed functions continue to be
provided to service members until these functions are incorporated into
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

o  Officials representing DFAS's DIMHRS office stated that they do not
believe the requirements adequately address a number of pay, accounting,
and personnel issues.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

According to JR&IO officials:

o 	DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) will provide all the functionality provided by
the services' and DFAS' legacy personnel and pay systems. JR&IO stated
that the defined requirements provide enough information to determine what
the system will do but acknowledged that understanding exactly how the
system would perform its functions was not possible until the system was
fully designed.

o  Owners of end users' legacy systems are generally not supportive of
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) because they want to preserve their autonomy in the
development and control of their own systems.

o  Support for the system by the services' executives is mixed. For
example, JR&IO said that (1) Army executives are committed to implementing
and using the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) system because they believe it will
address many problems that the Army currently faces, (2) Air Force
officials are generally supportive of the system but say they do not yet
know whether the system will meet all their needs, and (3) Navy and Marine
Corps executives are not as supportive because they are not fully
convinced that DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) will be an improvement over their
existing systems.

                      Objective 1: Requirements Management

o  A number of actions have been taken to reduce the risk that users will
not accept the system, including conducting numerous focus groups,
workshops, demonstrations, and presentations explaining how the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) system could address DOD's existing personnel/pay
problems.

Although JPMO officials told us that a consensus of the users'
organizations agreed with the decision to accept the contractor's design
of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) in November 2004, they submitted 391comments and
issues on the design. JPMO officials stated that they expect to resolve
these comments and issues by the end of February 2005.

                        Objective 2: Program Management

DOD does not have a well-integrated management structure for DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) and is not following all relevant supporting acquisition
management processes. In particular,

o  program responsibility, accountability, and authority are diffused;

o  the system has not been defined and designed according to a DOD-wide
integrated enterprise architecture;15

o  program stakeholders' activities have not been managed according to a
master plan/schedule that integrates all stakeholder activities; and

o  the program is following some, but not all, best practices associated
with acquiring business systems based on commercially available software.

Without a well-integrated approach and effective processes for managing a
program that is intended to be an integrated solution, DOD has increased
the risk that the program will not meet cost, schedule, capability, and
outcome goals.

15 JPMO officials stated that the system has not been defined and designed
according to a DOD-wide integrated enterprise architecture because the
enterprise architecture is not complete.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

Program responsibility, accountability, and authority are diffused.
Research shows that leading organizations ensure that programs are
structured to ensure that assigned authorities, responsibilities, and
accountabilities are clear and aligned under the continuous leadership and
direction of a single entity. For DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), these areas are
spread among three key stakeholder groups whose respective chains of
command do not meet at any point below the Secretary and Deputy Secretary
of Defense level.

o  Responsibility for requirements definition rests with JR&IO, which is
accountable through one chain of command.

o  Responsibility for system acquisition rests with JPMO, which is
accountable through another chain of command.

o  Responsibility for preparing for transition to DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
rests with the end users' organizations-11 major DOD components reporting
through five different chains of command.

The organization chart on the next slide shows the chain of command and
the coordination relationships among the primary DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
stakeholder groups.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

As the chart also shows, the services and DFAS have DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
management offices to assist JR&IO and JPMO and to represent their
respective end-user communities (the pay and personnel specialists). In
addition, various coordination and advisory bodies have been established.

The three primary stakeholder groups (JR&IO, JPMO, and the end users) are
accountable to three different groups of executives.

o  JR&IO is ultimately accountable to the Under Secretary for P&R, who is
the department's Principal Staff Assistant (PSA)16 for personnel and
compensation and is responsible for oversight of the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) program from a functional perspective.

o  JPMO is ultimately accountable to the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(NII), who

  is the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) program's Milestone Decision Authority (i.e.,

responsible for authorizing the program to move from one acquisition phase into

the next) and is responsible for the program from an acquisition perspective.17

16 The PSA is the executive-level manager responsible for the management
of defined functions within
DOD.
17 According to JR&IO officials, the separation of the functional and
acquisition lines of authority is a normal
DOD practice.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

o  The end users are ultimately accountable to the Offices of the
Secretaries of the Army, Air Force, and Navy (in coordination with the
Commandant of the Marine Corps) and the DOD Comptroller, who have ultimate
responsibility for implementing and using DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

Under this management structure, no single DOD entity is positioned to
exercise continuous program leadership and direction (i.e., has
responsibility, accountability, and authority (including budget authority)
over the entire DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) program). This is consistent with
our observation in a previous review that DOD's organizational structure
and embedded culture have not adequately accommodated an integrated,
departmentwide approach to joint systems.18

18See, for example, GAO/AIMD-98-5.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

Although no stakeholder organization has continuous programwide oversight
purview and visibility, the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) Executive Steering
Committee is made up of representatives of each of the entities that has
ultimate responsibility for the program.

According to DOD, the committee monitors the program, resolves issues that
are brought before it, and advises the Under Secretary (P&R).19 It meets
quarterly or when assembled by the chair-the Deputy Under Secretary of
Defense for Program Integration-who reports to the Under Secretary (P&R).

19DIMHRS (Pers/Pay) Report to Congress (June 2002).

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

According to JR&IO officials, the diffusion of program accountability,
responsibility, and authority will be reduced in fiscal year 2005, when
funding for both JR&IO and JPMO will be consolidated and centrally managed
by JR&IO.20 However, the enduser organizations will continue to separately
control their respective funds.

o  For example, officials at the Army's DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) management
office estimated that the Army's DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) funding needs will
range from $27 million to $43 million a year, but they said that the Army
is unlikely to fund the program at that level because of other priorities.

Without a DOD-wide integrated governance structure that vests an
executive-level organization or entity representing the interests of all
program stakeholders with responsibility, accountability, and authority
for a joint or integrated program like DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), DOD runs
the risk that the program will not produce an integrated set of outcomes.

20 According to JR&IO officials, DOD requested consolidated JR&IO and JPMO
funding for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) for fiscal year 2005.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

The DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) system has not been aligned with a DOD-wide
integrated enterprise architecture. An enterprise architecture is a
blueprint for guiding and constraining the definition and implementation
of programs in a way that supports strategic plans and promotes
integration, interoperability, and optimization of mission performance.
This blueprint serves as the common frame of reference to inform program
operational and technological decisionmaking relative to, for example,
what functions will be performed where, by whom, and using what
information.21 Successful organizations have used architectures to
effectively transform business operations and supporting systems.
Moreover, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003
directed DOD to develop and implement a departmentwide Business Enterprise
Architecture (BEA) to guide and constrain its business modernization
efforts.22

21 GAO, Information Technology: A Framework for Assessing and Improving
Enterprise Architecture Management (Version 1.1), Executive Guide,
GAO-03-584G (Washington, D.C.: April 2003).

22 Bob Stump National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003, Pub.
L. No. 107-314, section 1004, 116 Stat. 2458, 2629-2631 (Dec. 2, 2002).

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

Acquiring and implementing DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) without an enterprise
architecture increases the risk that DOD will make a substantial
investment in system solutions that will not be consistent with its
eventual blueprint for business operational and technological change.

Recognizing this, the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum in
March 2004 requiring the development and implementation of architectures
for each of DOD's six business domains, including the human resources
domain. These business domains, according to the department's
modernization program, are delegated the "authority, responsibility, and
accountability ... for their respective business areas" for implementing
business transformation,23 including the following:

o  "Leading the business transformation within the Domain."

o  "Managing its respective [system investment] portfolio to ensure
implementation of and compliance with the Business Enterprise Architecture
(BEA) and transition plan."

o  "Assisting in the extension of the [departmentwide] BEA" for the
domain.

23 DOD Business Management Modernization Program, Governance Approach.
http://www.dod.mil/comptroller/bmmp/pages/govern_dod.html.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

The Under Secretary (P&R), who is the domain owner for the human resources
domain, assigned JR&IO the responsibility for extending the BEA for the
human resources domain. According to JR&IO officials, the development of
the human resources portion of the BEA is being done concurrently with the
acquisition and deployment of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay).

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

Recognizing the importance of managing the concurrency of such activities
and ensuring that DOD's ongoing investments are pursued within the context
of its evolving BEA, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2003 also required that system improvements with proposed obligations
of funds greater than $1 million be reviewed to determine if they are
consistent with the BEA.

To satisfy this requirement, JPMO officials presented the DOD Office of
the Comptroller, which is developing the BEA, with information on DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) compliance with version 1.0 of the BEA in April 2003.
However, according to our review of the information used by JPMO in April
2003 to obtain an architectural compliance determination, this information
did not include a documented, verifiable analysis demonstrating such
compliance. In the absence of such analysis, the JPMO program manager
instead made commitments that DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) would be consistent
with the architecture. On the basis of this commitment, the DOD
Comptroller certified in April 2003 that DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) is
consistent with the BEA. Later, JPMO included in the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) contract a requirement that the systems specification be
compatible with the emerging BEA.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

According to JR&IO officials, the April 2003 architectural certification
is preliminary, and further certification is needed. They stated that
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) will undergo another certification before the
system deployment decision.

By this time, however, lengthy and costly DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) design
and development work will be completed. The real value in having and using
an architecture is knowing, at the time that extensive system definition,
design, and development are occurring, what the larger blueprint for the
enterprise is, so that definition, design, and development can be guided
and constrained by this frame of reference. Aligning to the architecture
after the system is designed could also require expensive system rework to
address any inconsistencies with the architecture.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

The absence of verifiable analysis of compliance was in part due to the
state of completeness of BEA version 1.0. As we reported in September
2003, this version was missing key content, including sufficient depth and
detail to effectively guide and constrain system investments.24 Since
then, DOD has issued other versions of the BEA. However, we reported in
May 2004 that version 2.0 of the BEA still did not include many of the key
elements of a well-defined architecture.25 For example, the "to be"
environment did not provide sufficient descriptive content related to
future business operations and supporting technology to permit effective
acquisition and implementation of system solutions and associated
operational change. DOD since issued versions 2.2 and 2.2.1 in July and
August 2004, respectively.

24 GAO, DOD Business Systems Modernization: Important Progress Made to
Develop Business Enterprise Architecture, but Much Work Remains,
GAO-03-1018 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 19, 2003).

25 GAO, DOD Business Systems Modernization: Limited Progress in
Development of Business Enterprise Architecture and Oversight of
Information Technology Investments, GAO-04-731R (Washington, D.C., May 17,
2004).

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) program stakeholder activities are not being
managed according to an integrated master plan/schedule. IEEE standards
state that a master plan/schedule should be prepared and updated
throughout the system's life cycle to establish key events, activities,
and tasks across the program, including dependencies and relationships
among them. A properly designed master plan/schedule should allow for the
proper scheduling and sequencing of activities and tasks, allocation of
resources, preparation of budgets, assignment of personnel, and criteria
for measuring progress.

In contrast, the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) program plan/schedule is based on
the contractor's and JPMO's activities and does not include all the
activities that enduser organizations must perform to prepare for DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay), such as

o  cleaning legacy data, preparing legacy systems for interfacing, and
acquiring and installing the necessary infrastructure;

o  making organizational changes and business process improvements
associated with DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), such as revising the duties that
are now performed by pay specialists and personnel specialists; and

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

o  making revisions to their regulations to ensure consistency with the
reengineered business rules designed into DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) that
differ from existing DOD or service rules and policies (e.g., those noted
earlier in this briefing as being in accordance with "P&R guidance" in the
use cases).

With a plan/schedule that focuses on the contractor's and JPMO's
activities and does not extend to all DOD program stakeholders'
activities, the risk increases that key and dependent events, activities,
and tasks will not be performed as needed, which in turn increases the
risk of schedule slippage and program goal shortfalls.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

Some, but not all, key practices associated with acquiring COTS-based
business systems are being followed. According to SEI, the quality of the
processes and practices followed in acquiring software-intensive systems
greatly influences the quality of the systems produced. Moreover,
acquiring custom-developed system solutions is sufficiently different from
acquiring COTS-based systems that adherence to certain practices unique to
the latter is key to their success. We recently reported on key
acquisition management best practices associated with COTS-based
systems,26 including

o  discouraging the modification of commercial components and allowing it
only if justified by a thorough analysis of the life-cycle costs and
benefits,

o  explicitly evaluating systems integration contractors on their ability
to implement commercial components,

o  centrally controlling modification or upgrades to deployed versions of
system components and precluding users from making unilateral changes to
releases,

26GAO-04-722.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

o  ensuring that plans explicitly provide for preparing users for the
impact that the business processes embedded in the commercial components
will have on their respective roles and responsibilities,

o  proactively managing the introduction and adoption of changes to how
users will be expected to use the system to execute their jobs, and

o  ensuring that project plans explicitly provide for the necessary time
and resources for integrating commercial components with legacy systems.

To its credit, DOD is following the first three of these practices for
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), but its is not following the last three. For
example, program officials told us that they expected the contractor to
base the system design on the high-level requirements defined in the ORD
as a way to maximize the contractor's ability to leverage the COTS
product. Furthermore, the contract includes award fees that give the
contractor incentives to, among other things, minimize customization of
the COTS software.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

However, DOD does not have an integrated program plan/schedule that
provides for end-user organization activities that are associated with
preparing users for the operational and role-based changes that the system
will introduce, such as the need to revise the duties that are now
performed by pay specialists and personnel specialists. Furthermore, DOD's
program plans do not recognize the end-user organizations' time and
resource needs associated with integrating DIMHRS with their respective
legacy systems, and JPMO is not actively managing these enduser
operational changes. Although JR&IO officials told us that some planning
has occurred to position end users for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) changes,
officials representing the DIMHRS offices in the services and DFAS stated
that these plans do not adequately address the above areas.

Objective 2: Program Management Structure and Processes

By not following all relevant best practices associated with acquiring
COTS-based systems, DOD is increasing the risk that DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
will not be successfully implemented and effectively used.

                                  Conclusions

The importance of DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) to DOD's ability to manage
military personnel and pay services demands that the department employ
effective processes and structures in defining, designing, developing, and
deploying the system to maximize its chances of success. For DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay), however, DOD did not initially perform important
requirements development steps, and the detailed system requirements are
missing important content. DOD has begun to remedy these omissions by
taking actions such as tracing among requirements documents and system
design documents to ensure alignment, but user organizations' acceptance
of requirements has not occurred. Moreover, although DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) is to be an integrated system, it is not being governed by
integrated tools and approaches, such as an integrated program management
structure, integrated DOD business enterprise architecture, and an
integrated master plan/schedule.

                                  Conclusions

Furthermore, while DOD is appropriately attempting to maximize the use of
COTS products in building DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and is following some
best practices for developing COTS-based systems, others are not being
followed.

The absence of the full complement of effective processes and structures
related to each of these areas can be attributed to a number of causes,
including the program's overly schedule-driven approach and the difficulty
of overcoming DOD's long-standing cultural resistance to departmentwide
solutions. Effectively addressing these shortcomings is essential because
they introduce unnecessary risks that reduce the chances of accomplishing
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) goals on time and within budget.

It is critical that DOD carefully consider the risks caused by each of
these areas of concern and that it appropriately strengthen its management
processes, structures, and plans to effectively minimize these risks. To
do less undermines the program's chances of timely and successful
completion.

                                Recommendations

To assist DOD in strengthening its program management processes,
structures, and plans and thereby increase its chances of successfully
delivering DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), we recommend that the Secretary of
Defense direct the Assistant Secretary (NII), the Under Secretary (P&R),
and the Under Secretary (Comptroller), in collaboration with the
leadership of the military services and DFAS, to jointly ensure an
integrated, coordinated, and risk-based approach to all DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) definition, design, development, and deployment
activities. At a minimum, this should include

o  ensuring that joint system requirements are complete and correct and
are acceptable to users' organizations;

                                Recommendations

o  establishing a DOD-wide integrated governance structure for DIMHRS that
vests an executive-level organization or entity representing the interests
of all program stakeholders, including JR&IO, JPMO, the services, and
DFAS, with responsibility, accountability, and authority for the entire
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) program, and ensuring that all stakeholder
interests and positions are appropriately heard and considered during
program reviews and before key program decisions;

o  ensuring that the degree of consistency between DIMHRS and the evolving
DOD-wide business enterprise architecture is continuously analyzed, and
that material inconsistencies between the two, both potential and actual,
are disclosed at all program reviews and decision points and in budget
submissions for the program, along with any associated system risks and
steps to mitigate these risks;

o  developing and implementing a DOD-wide, integrated master plan/schedule
of activities that extends to all DOD program stakeholders;

                                Recommendations

o  ensuring that all relevant acquisition management best practices
associated with COTS-based systems are appropriately followed; and

o  adopting a more event-driven, risk-based approach to managing DIMHRS
that adequately considers factors other than the contract schedule.

                                 Attachment I:

Our objectives were to determine

1.	whether the Department of Defense (DOD) has effective management
processes in place for managing the definition of the requirements for the
Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System (DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay)) and

2.	whether DOD has established an integrated program management structure
for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) and is following effective processes for
acquiring a system based on commercial software components.

To determine industry and government best practices and regulations for
effective requirements definition and management, we evaluated criteria
from the Capability Maturity Models (CMM) developed by Carnegie Mellon
University's Software Engineering Institute and standards developed by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), as well as the
DOD 5000 series and other applicable DOD policies and regulations, federal
accounting standards, and prior GAO reports and best practices guidance.

                                 Attachment I:

To evaluate requirements management efforts, we

o  interviewed officials with the Joint Requirements and Integration
Office (JR&IO), which is responsible for requirements definition;
officials from the Joint Program Management Office (JPMO), which is
responsible for system acquisition and deployment; officials in each of
the DIMHRS offices for each of the four services (Army, Air Force, Navy,
and Marine Corps) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS);
officials in DOD's Business Management Modernization Program, which is
responsible for Business Enterprise Architecture oversight; and officials
from supporting contractors;

o  attended requirements definition, review, and change meetings,
including meetings of the Joint Integration Group and the Functional
Requirements Review Board, as well as a critical design review;

o  obtained written responses to questions from these various offices and
other entities;

o  reviewed DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) planning documentation, milestone
review materials, requirements and design documentation, contracts, and
briefings;

                                 Attachment I:

o  discussed the use cases with selected personnel and pay specialists and
reviewed end users' written comments to JR&IO on the use cases;

o  estimated the extent of several problems by evaluating the clarity and
understandability of use cases in a probability sample27 of 20 of 284 pay
use cases and 20 of 140 personnel use cases; and

o  compared requirements management activities with relevant industry and
government guidance and requirements, including CMM and IEEE, and the DOD
5000 series and Joint Chiefs of Staff regulations.

27A different probability sample of use cases could produce different
estimates. In this briefing, we present estimates along with the 95
percent confidence intervals for these estimates. This means that there is
a 95 percent probability that the actual value for the entire population
is within the range defined by the confidence interval. In other words, if
100 different samples were taken, in 95 of those 100 samples, the actual
value for the entire population would be within the range defined by the
confidence interval, and in 5 of those 100 samples, the value would be
either higher or lower than the range defined by the confidence interval.

                                 Attachment I:

To evaluate program management structures and processes, we

o  interviewed officials from JR&IO, JPMO, and the DIMHRS offices for each
of the services and DFAS;

o  analyzed DOD and DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) program management and process
management documentation and activities, including charters, process
descriptions, budgets, and program plans, etc.; and

o  reviewed relevant analysis supporting program decisions, such as
economic justification and architectural alignment.

                                 Attachment I:

We determined that the data used in this report are generally reliable for
the purposes for which we used them. For DOD-provided data, we have made
appropriate attribution to indicate the data's source.

We performed our work at DOD headquarters; JR&IO, in the Washington, D.C.,
area; JPMO in New Orleans, Louisiana; the Army's, Navy's, Air Force's, and
Marine Corps' DIMHRS offices; and DFAS's offices in the Washington, D.C.,
area.

This work was performed from January through November 2004 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Defense

Note: GAO's comments supplementing those in the report's text appear at
the end of this appendix.

See comment 1. See comment 2.

See comment 3. See comment 4.

See comment 5.

                         See comment 6. See comment 7.

                         See comment 8. See comment 9.

                                See comment 10.

See comment 11.

See comment 12.

See comment 13. See comment 14. See comment 15.

See comment 16.

See comment 17. See comment 18.

                                See comment 19.

                                See comment 20.

                                See comment 21.

                                See comment 22.

                                See comment 23.

                                See comment 24.

                                See comment 25.

                        See comment 26. See comment 27.

                                See comment 28.

  GAO's Comments

The following are GAO's comments on the Department of Defense's letter
dated January 25, 2005.

1. 	The Department of Defense's (DOD) characterization of our objectives
is not correct. As stated in our report, our objectives were to determine
whether DOD had effective processes in place for managing the definition
of requirements for the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System
(DIMHRS) (Personnel/Pay) and whether it established an integrated program
management structure and followed effective processes for acquiring a
system based on commercial software components. Accordingly, we assessed
the processes used to manage DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), and the content of
the requirements, against relevant best practices, many of which are
embodied in DOD and federal policies and guidance, and against federal
guidance, federal accounting standards, and prior GAO reports.

2. 	We do not believe that our finding that DOD is appropriately limiting
modification of commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) products (a best
practice) is incongruous with our recommendation that requirements be
acceptable to user organizations (another best practice). Furthermore, our
report does not recommend that DOD act on all comments regardless of
impact. Our recommendations concerning system requirements are intended to
provide DOD with the principles and rules that it should apply in
executing a requirements-acceptance process that permits all stakeholder
interests and positions to be heard, considered, and resolved in the
context of what makes economic sense. Furthermore, our report makes
complementary recommendations that discourage changes to COTS products
unless fully justified on the basis of life-cycle costs, benefits, and
risks. Finally, while we do not dispute whether DOD has followed a process
to screen out comments that would have necessitated COTS modification,
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) users said that this process did not allow for
effective resolution of the comments, which is the basis for our
recommendation aimed at gaining user acceptance of requirements.

3. 	We have not concluded that DOD had not done enough to ensure that all
stakeholders have had full input to the requirements. Our conclusion was
that DOD had not obtained user acceptance of the detailed requirements,
and that this choice entails risks.

4. 	We disagree. Our report neither states nor suggests that DOD act on
all comments that it receives on requirements from all sources. Also, see
comment 2.

5. See comment 10.

6. 	We acknowledge DOD's implementation of certain best practices as noted
in our report. However, at the time we concluded our work, DOD was not
following all relevant and practicable best practices, as we discuss in
our report.

7. 	We do not dispute DOD's comment about efforts on DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) relative to other system acquisitions because our review's
objectives and approach did not extend to comparing the two. See comment 1
for a description of our objectives. Furthermore, while it is correct that
DOD's regulations only require stakeholder agreement with the Operational
Requirements Document, our evaluation was not limited to whether DOD was
meeting its own policy; we also evaluated whether DOD's processes were
consistent with industry and government best practices.

8. 	We do not disagree that DOD has taken important steps to meet the
goals of requirements completeness and correctness, and we do not have a
basis for commenting on whether the department might have completed
important requirements-to-design traceability steps since we completed our
work. However, as we state in our report, these tracing steps began in
response to the inquiries we made during the course of our review.
Furthermore, DOD's comments contain no evidence to show that it has
addressed the limitations in the requirements' completeness and
correctness that we cite in the report, such as those relating to the
interface and data requirements, and they do not address the
understandability issues we found relative to an estimated 77 percent of
the detailed requirements. Moreover, DOD even stated in its comments that
its latest program review revealed 606 business process comments and 17
interface comments that it deemed noncritical, although it noted that they
were still being analyzed.

9. 	We do not dispute DOD's position that the Joint Requirements Oversight
Council's validation of the Operational Requirements Document is all that
is required by DOD regulation, and we do not have a basis for commenting
on whether its documentation of requirements for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay)
was innovative and unprecedented. Our review objective relating to
requirements, as stated in our report, was to address whether DOD has
effective processes in place for managing the definition of the
requirements. To

accomplish this objective, and as also stated in our report, we analyzed
DOD's requirements management efforts against recognized best practices.

10. We do not disagree that DOD has taken numerous steps to gain user
acceptance of the system. However, as we point out in the report, user
organizations still had questions and reservations concerning the
requirements. Not adequately resolving these issues, and thereby gaining
user acceptance of requirements, increases the risk that a system will be
developed that does not meet users' needs, that users will not adopt the
developed and deployed system, and that later system rework will be
required to rectify this situation.

11. We do not question that DOD has reviewed the detailed requirements
since we completed our review. However, we challenge DOD's comment that
all questions have been resolved for two reasons. First, DOD's comments
contain no evidence to show that it has addressed the limitations in the
requirements' completeness and correctness that we cite in the report,
such as those relating to the interface and data requirements, or the
understandability issues we found relative to an estimated 77 percent of
the detailed requirements. Second, in its comments, DOD acknowledges that
606 questions remain regarding requirements and design issues.

12. We agree that the detailed requirements are not the sole vehicle for
gaining user acceptance of the system. Rather, they are one vehicle to be
used in a continuous process to ensure acceptability of a system to end
users. Industry and government best practices advocate users'
understanding and acceptance of requirements, and these practices are not
limited to high-level requirements descriptions, but rather apply to more
detailed requirements descriptions as well.

13. We do not dispute that the roles and responsibilities of the Executive
Steering Committee are defined and documented. In fact, we cite the
committee's responsibilities in our report.

14. We agree that DOD has forums and processes for communicating
stakeholder interests. However, we do not agree that these have provided
for effective resolution of concerns and comments, as we describe in our
report. Also, see comment 10.

15. We disagree. In our view, any entity, whether it is an individual,
office, or committee, can have responsibility, accountability, and
authority for managing a program. Moreover, we intentionally worded the
recommendation so as not to prescribe what entity should fulfill this

role for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay). Rather, our intent was to ensure that
such an entity was designated and empowered.

16. We disagree. DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) is a DOD-wide program involving
three distinct stakeholder groups whose respective chains of command do
not meet at any point below the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense
levels. As we state in our report, responsibility, authority, and
accountability for DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) is in fact diffused among three
stakeholder groups with responsibility for requirements with the Joint
Requirements and Integration Office, responsibility for acquisition with
the Joint Program Management Office, and responsibility for transition to
DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) with the 11 end users' organizations. Furthermore,
under the current structure, only one of the three stakeholder groups, the
Joint Requirements and Integration Office (JR&IO), is accountable to the
Under Secretary, and authority over DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) is spread
across the three groups. Accordingly, the intent of our recommendation is
for DOD to create an accountability structure that can set expectations
for stakeholders and hold them accountable.

17. See comment 2. Furthermore, we agree that the department should not
replicate "as is" processes. However, as our report points out, the users'
comment process did not provide for effective resolution; therefore, users
stated that they were not willing to sign off on the requirements as
sufficient to meet their needs. The intent of our recommendation is to
ensure that the system's functional acceptability to users is reasonably
ensured before the system is developed, thereby minimizing the risk of
more expensive system rework to meet users' needs.

18. We do not believe and nowhere in our report do we state or suggest
that stakeholders should be granted veto power. Also, see comments 2 and
3.

19. We disagree. As stated in our report, DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) had a
preliminary architectural certification with the Business Enterprise
Architecture (BEA) in April 2003. However, DOD could not provide us with
documented, verifiable analysis demonstrating this consistency and forming
the basis for the certification, in part because the BEA was incomplete.
Rather, we were told that this certification was based on the DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay) program manager's stated commitment to be consistent at
some future point, and the system is scheduled to undergo another
certification before the system deployment decision. Moreover, we had
previously reported that the BEA, including the military personnel and pay
portions of the

architecture, was not complete, and thus not in place to effectively guide
and constrain system investments. As we state in our report, the real
value in having an architecture is knowing, at the time when system
definition, design, and development are occurring, what the larger
blueprint for the enterprise is in order to guide and constrain these
activities.

20. We disagree. See comment 21.

21. We disagree. As we state in our report, DOD is not following three
relevant best practices. These practices are focused on effectively
planning for the full complement of activities that are needed to prepare
an organization for the institutional and individual changes that
COTS-based system solutions introduce. Such planning is intended to
ensure, among other things, that key change management activities,
including the dependencies among these activities, are defined and agreed
to by stakeholders, including ensuring that adequate resources and
realistic time frames are established to accomplish them. In this regard,
DOD agreed in its comments that it does not have an integrated master
plan/schedule for the program, which is an essential tool for capturing
the results of the proactive change management planning that the best
practices and our recommendation advocate. Moreover, available plans did
not include all activities that end-user organizations will need to make
regarding organizational changes and business process improvements
associated with the system, such as revising the duties that are now
performed by pay specialists and personnel specialists. This concern was
stated by representatives of the DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay) offices in the
services and DFAS, who stated that current plans do not adequately address
the activities, time frames, and resources they will need to complete the
transition to DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay). Furthermore, at the time that we
completed our review, DOD had yet to identify all the legacy systems that
would interface with DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), and so DOD could not estimate
the time and resources that will be needed to develop and implement legacy
system interfaces with DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay). Both published research and
our experience in evaluating the acquisition and implementation of
COTS-based system solutions show that the absence of well-planned,
proactive organizational and individual change management efforts can
cause these system efforts to fail.

22. See comment 21. Furthermore, among the ambiguities in the detailed
requirements that we cite in our report are references that do not clearly
state the associated practice or policy.

23. See comments 8 and 22. In addition and as stated in our report, the
process used to define detailed requirements has yet to result in user
acceptance. Specifically, according to end-user representatives from each
of the services, the detailed requirements were difficult to understand
because they were shared in a piecemeal fashion and did not include
sufficient detail. Furthermore, these representatives stated that they
were not willing to sign off on the requirements.

24. We do not dispute that DOD has provided demonstrations of and training
on the COTS product. However, as we point out in our report, users still
have questions on DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay), which will be based on the COTS
product, including how it will be used to perform personnel and pay
functions, and how it will change the roles and responsibilities of end
users. Moreover, proactive management of the organizational and individual
change associated with COTS-based system solutions requires careful
planning for the full range of activities needed to facilitate the
introduction and adoption of the system, and as we state in the report and
DOD agreed in its comments, the department does not have the kind of
integrated master plan that would reflect such planning.

25. We do not dispute that existing plans have been reviewed and approved
by the contractor and an independent reviewer. However, we disagree that
these plans sufficiently incorporate all the change management activities
that are needed to position DOD for adoption and use of DIMHRS
(Personnel/Pay). In the absence of an integrated master schedule, which
the department acknowledges in its comments as yet to be developed, DOD
cannot adequately ensure that the full range of organizational and
individual change management activities will be effectively performed.

26. We support DOD's stated commitment to follow a more event-driven
risk-based approach, and have slightly modified our recommendation to
recognize this commitment. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the
approach that we found the department taking during the course of our
review was schedule driven, meaning that program activities were truncated
or performed concurrently in order to meet established deadlines. For
example, as we describe in our report, data requirements (which are
derived from higher-level information needs) were provided to the
contractor before information needs were fully defined because the
contractor needed these data requirements to complete the system design on
schedule. Also during our review, the program had developed plans for
accelerating system deployment in order to meet an externally imposed
deadline. After we raised concern

about the risks of accelerating the schedule, and the lack of adequate
risk-mitigation strategies, DOD changed its plans.

27. At the time of our review, we observed that the contract was a driver
for the schedule. For example and as our report states, in March 2004,
JR&IO provided a version of the detailed requirements to the development
and integration contractor in order to meet the contractor's schedule,
even though it had received thousands of comments on the requirements from
users that it had yet to examine and resolve.

28. We support DOD's comment that it will revise the schedule if events do
not occur as anticipated because it is consistent with our recommendation.

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact Donald C. Snyder, (202) 512- 7204

Acknowledgments 	In addition to the person named above, the following
persons made key contributions to this report: Nabajyoti Barkakati, Harold
J. Brumm, Barbara S. Collier, Nicole L. Collier, George L. Jones, John C.
Martin, Kenneth E. Patton, B. Scott Pettis, Mark F. Ramage, Karl W. D.
Seifert, Robert W. Wagner, Joseph J. Watkins, and Daniel K. Wexler.

(350623)

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