Summary

In response to a congressional request, GAO provided an overview of the three funding strategies which make up the Department of Defense (DOD) Productivity Enhancing Capital Investment (PECI) Program.

GAO found that PECI, which is one of a series of productivity initiatives DOD has used to improve operating efficiency, consists of three funding strategies. The Productivity Enhancing Incentive Funds (PEIF) finance projects costing less than $100,000 and allow activities to quickly capitalize on cost-saving equipment to avoid the 2-year lead time required in the budget cycle. In addition to the dollar limitation, the equipment must be off-the-shelf and return the investment cost within 2 years. The Productivity Investment Fund (PIF) adds funds to the services' budget funds for costlier investments with longer recovery periods. As a third strategy, DOD encourages individual services and agencies to fund other productivity enhancing opportunities and provides supplemental funding for PEIF and PIF. According to DOD, the investments to date will provide benefits exceeding $3.6 billion, while freeing the time of over 18,000 personnel to perform additional mission requirements.