Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided cost information on the Navy's proposed Integrated Disbursing and Accounting Financial Information Processing System (IDA).

GAO found that the Navy: (1) planned to integrate several disbursing and accounting systems into IDA to ensure proper recording of commercial accounts payable and obligations prior to payments; (2) believes that IDA will resolve the inadequacies of its many separate systems and comply with the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act; (3) spent about $90 million to develop IDA and planned full deployment by 1992; (4) estimated IDA life-cycle costs at about $878.8 million, but reported life-cycle costs of only $91.4 million to Congress; and (5) attempted to control costs by hiring an experienced project officer, reorganizing its accounting and finance center, and publishing an IDA project charter to better assign responsibilities and accountability for system development. GAO also found that, since the Navy's cost estimate did not exceed the system development limit, the Department of Defense did not review the IDA project.