Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) Corporate Information Management (CIM) initiative to determine the basis for and validity of the savings DOD estimated it would derive from improving the standardization, quality, and consistency of data from DOD management information systems.

GAO found that: (1) there was no basis to support the DOD estimate that CIM would save about $2.2 billion over the next 5 years by developing standard, DOD-wide automated information systems to replace multiple systems that were unique to each service; (2) DOD did not analyze or determine the time or resources needed to implement standard systems in specific functional areas; (3) DOD based the estimate on its managerial judgment that CIM could save up to 25 percent of systems development and modernization costs; (4) DOD reduced the services' fiscal year 1991 budgets to encourage them to identify and curtail duplicative system developments; and (5) DOD did not yet know whether the budget reductions were having the intended effect or whether the $2.2-billion savings estimate was reasonable.