Summary

Waste and inefficiency in the Defense Department's (DOD) logistics system, including the management of its $13 billion depot maintenance program, is one of the key reasons GAO included military infrastructure activities in its list of 24 government programs at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. (See GAO/HR-97-7.) This testimony discusses DOD's (1) plans for eliminating costly depot maintenance excess capacity, (2) progress in finalizing a new depot workload allocation policy, (3) current approach to allocating maintenance workloads for new and existing systems, and (4) estimates that billions can be saved by outsourcing depot maintenance.

GAO noted that: (1) it is important to note that the waste and inefficiency in DOD's logistics system, including the management of its $13 billion depot maintenance program, is one of the key reasons GAO identified DOD's infrastructure activities as 1 of 24 high-risk areas within the federal government; (2) costly excess capacity totalling about 50 percent remains in the DOD depot system, which actually comprises four systems; (3) as the services seek to privatize a greater share of their depot maintenance, the cost of maintaining excess capacity will increase unless additional capacity reductions are made; (4) the Navy has made the greatest progress in dealing with this through consolidation and expedited closures of facilities affected by the base realignment and closure process; (5) the Army and, even more so, the Air Force have been less successful; (6) all three military departments to some extent are implementing actions that will privatize-in-place costly excess capacity; (7) GAO's work shows that DOD's plans and policies for outsourcing depot maintenance are still evolving; (8) last year, the Congress received and ultimately rejected DOD's proposed policy regarding depot-level maintenance and repair; (9) provisions in the policy were predicated on relief from the existing statutes that influence depot workload allocations between the public and private sectors; (10) some changes have been made based on congressional concerns about certain aspects of the policy report, but DOD has not finalized its new policy to address all of these concerns; (11) however, core capability requirements have not yet been quantified and no time frame has been established for finalizing key draft depot maintenance policy letters issued in December 1996 and January 1997; (12) GAO's ongoing work shows that for both existing and new systems, assessments are being made to determine what portion of the current workload could be outsourced with acceptable risk; (13) the absence of clear policy on how to proceed in this area has caused some delays in choosing maintenance sources and raised some concerns about whether the most cost-effective strategies are being selected; (14) DOD's projected savings are based on estimates cited by the Commission on Roles and Missions (CORM) and the Defense Science Board (DSB); (15) GAO believes that in some cases outsourcing can reduce maintenance costs, but not to the extent being estimated by the CORM and DSB; and (16) if not effectively managed, privatizing depot maintenance activities could exacerbate existing capacity problems and the inefficiencies inherent in underutilization of depot maintenance capacity.