United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office Accounting and Information Management Division author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 1999-02-26 monographic deposited born digital 85 p. GA 1.13:AIMD-99-41 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-AIMD-99-41 P0b002ee180396ac0 f:ai99041 DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-24 GAOREPORTS-AIMD-99-41 machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-AIMD-99-41 AIMD-99-41 ADP procurement Customs administration Information resources management Strategic information systems planning Cost effectiveness analysis Systems conversions Systems design Life cycle costs Cost analysis Computer software verification and validation Customs Service Automated Commercial Environment System Customs Service National Customs Automation Program Software Capability Maturity Model Treasury International Trade Data System Chapter Report AIMD

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Customs Service's management of the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), focusing on whether Customs has adequately justified ACE cost-effectiveness.<p/>GAO noted that: (1) Customs is not managing ACE effectively, and it does not have a firm basis for concluding that ACE is a cost-effective solution to modernizing its commercial environment; (2) GAO found serious weaknesses relating to architectural definition, investment management, and software development and acquisition that must be corrected before further investment in ACE is justified; (3) Customs is not building ACE within the context of a complete and enforced systems architecture; (4) in May 1998, GAO reported that Customs' architecture was incomplete because it was not based on a complete understanding of its enterprisewide functional and information needs; (5) GAO also reported that Customs had not yet instituted effective procedures for ensuring compliance with the architecture once it is completed; (6) until its architecture is completed and effectively enforced, Customs will not have adequate assurance that information systems like ACE will optimally support its needs across all business areas; (7) further, Customs lacks a reliable estimate of what ACE will cost to build, deploy, and maintain, and Customs has neither adequately justified, nor is it effectively monitoring, ACE's cost-effectiveness; (8) specifically, Customs did not use rigorous cost estimating techniques in preparing its cost estimate, and did not disclose the inherent imprecision of the estimate; (9) additionally, Customs omitted costs and inflated benefits in preparing its cost-benefit analysis; (10) moreover, Customs is not using effective incremental investment management practices; (11) while Customs plans to develop/acquire ACE in 21 increments, these increments are not individually cost-benefit justified, and Customs is not determining what benefits each increment, once operational, actually provides; (12) as a result, Customs will not know if ACE's expected return-on-investment is actually being realized until it has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing/acquiring the entire system; and (13) GAO found that Customs has neither the capability to effectively develop nor acquire ACE and that its processes for doing both, according to widely accepted and proven software capability maturity models, are ad hoc, immature, and ineffective. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-AIMD-99-41/html/GAOREPORTS-AIMD-99-41.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-AIMD-99-41/pdf/GAOREPORTS-AIMD-99-41.pdf GAO/AIMD-99-41 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-AIMD-99-41 Chapter Report GAO/AIMD-99-41; Customs Service Modernization: Serious Management and Technical Weaknesses Must Be Corrected; ADP procurement Customs administration Information resources management Strategic information systems planning Cost effectiveness analysis Systems conversions Systems design Life cycle costs Cost analysis Computer software verification and validation Customs Service Automated Commercial Environment System Customs Service National Customs Automation Program Software Capability Maturity Model Treasury International Trade Data System Title 19 Section 1411et seq. 19 U.S.C. 1411et seq. Public Law 103-182 Public Law 104-106