Key Issues > DOD Support Infrastructure Management - High Risk Issue

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DOD Support Infrastructure Management - High Risk Issue

DOD manages a large global real property portfolio with a replacement value that DOD estimates to be about $1.2 trillion. This infrastructure is critical to maintaining military readiness, and the cost to build and maintain it represents a significant financial commitment.

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As stated in GAO's 2017 High Risk report, the Department of Defense (DOD) manages a global real property portfolio that consists of more than 562,000 facilities—including barracks, commissaries, data centers, office buildings, laboratories, and maintenance depots—located on more than 5,000 sites worldwide and covering more than 28 million acres. DOD’s base structure report for fiscal year 2018, which is a summary of DOD’s real property inventory data, estimates that DOD facilities have a plant replacement value of about $1.2 trillion. This infrastructure is critical to maintaining military readiness, and the cost to build and maintain it represents a significant financial commitment.

Since designating this area as high risk in 1997, GAO reported on long-term challenges DOD faces in managing its portfolio of facilities, such as reducing excess infrastructure, sustaining facilities, providing facilities needed to support several simultaneous force structure initiatives, and achieving cost savings and efficiencies in base support through its joint basing initiative. Because DOD has made significant progress in addressing issues regarding planning and funding to sustain facilities, the defense infrastructure high-risk area was narrowed in 2011 to focus on two remaining areas: (1) reducing excess infrastructure and (2) achieving cost savings and efficiencies in base support through eliminating duplication of support services where bases are in close proximity to or adjacent to one another. GAO's 2013 high-risk update noted that DOD continued to have significant excess capacity relative to its planned force structure and had not made significant progress in realizing the anticipated cost savings and efficiencies envisioned to be gained through joint basing. Therefore, DOD needed to take additional actions to address these two areas.

This High Risk Report is updated every two years, at the start of each new Congress. For more information on this High Risk Issue, see What We Found and What Remains to Be Done.

For more on GAO's reports and recommendations, see the key reports tab above.

Looking for our recommendations? Click on any report to find each associated recommendation and its current implementation status.

Defense Real Property: DOD Needs to Take Additional Actions to Improve Management of Its Inventory Data

GAO-19-73: Published: Nov 13, 2018. Publicly Released: Nov 13, 2018.

GAO found that the Department of Defense's (DOD) Real Property Assets Database (RPAD) contained inaccurate data and lacked completeness, although certain data that GAO reviewed had improved their accuracy since fiscal year 2014. RPAD is a department-wide database of real property data annually compiled by the Office of the Secretary of Defense from the inventories of the military services and DOD'...

DOD Installation Services: Use of Intergovernmental Support Agreements Has Had Benefits, but Additional Information Would Inform Expansion

GAO-19-4: Published: Oct 23, 2018. Publicly Released: Oct 23, 2018.

Based on analysis of 8 selected intergovernmental support agreements (IGSAs) and interviews with officials, GAO found that the military services have realized financial and nonfinancial benefits from using IGSAs with local or state governments to obtain installation services such as waste removal, grounds maintenance, and stray animal control.Financial benefits. Of the 8 selected IGSAs, 5 resulte...

Defense Infrastructure: DOD Needs to Improve the Accuracy of Its Excess Capacity Estimates

GAO-18-230: Published: May 24, 2018. Publicly Released: May 24, 2018.

The Department of Defense's (DOD) 2017 infrastructure capacity report addressed four of five required elements from section 2815 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2016. Specifically, DOD's report addressed the elements requiring it to submita force-structure plan,a categorical inventory of worldwide military installations,a discussion of categories of excess infrastr...

Defense Facility Condition: Revised Guidance Needed to Improve Oversight of Assessments and Ratings

GAO-16-662: Published: Jun 23, 2016. Publicly Released: Jun 23, 2016.

The military services have reported differing levels of progress in meeting Department of Defense (DOD) facility policy requirements, including implementing a standardized process for assessing facility conditions and recording condition ratings based on this process. The services are to implement the standardized process in part by assessing the condition of buildings, pavement, and rail using th...

Defense Infrastructure: More Accurate Data Would Allow DOD to Improve the Tracking, Management, and Security of Its Leased Facilities

GAO-16-101: Published: Mar 15, 2016. Publicly Released: Mar 15, 2016.

While the Department of Defense (DOD) is taking some steps to address data issues, it cannot fully determine the number, size, and costs of its leases for real property because its Real Property Assets Database (RPAD), the real property inventory system that DOD uses to report on its leased assets, contains some inaccurate and incomplete data. GAO found that about 15 percent of the RPAD lease reco...

Military Base Realignments and Closures: More Guidance and Information Needed to Take Advantage of Opportunities to Consolidate Training

GAO-16-45: Published: Feb 18, 2016. Publicly Released: Feb 18, 2016.

For each of the six recommendations GAO reviewed from the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round, the Department of Defense (DOD) implemented the recommendations by requiring military services to relocate select training functions; however, GAO found that two of the six training functions reviewed were able to take advantage of the opportunity provided by BRAC to consolidate training so th...

Underutilized Facilities: DOD and GSA Information Sharing May Enhance Opportunities to Use Space at Military Installations

GAO-15-346: Published: Jun 18, 2015. Publicly Released: Jun 18, 2015.

Department of Defense (DOD) guidance outlines options for granting the use of unutilized (vacant) and underutilized (partially vacant) space on military installations to non-DOD entities, such as other federal agencies, and installations consider several factors when contemplating such grants. For example, DOD and military department guidance identifies the real estate instruments, such as leases...

DOD Joint Bases: Implementation Challenges Demonstrate Need to Reevaluate the Program

GAO-14-577: Published: Sep 19, 2014. Publicly Released: Sep 19, 2014.

Joint base officials reported varying progress in consolidating installation-support functions, and challenges resulting from consolidation efforts that created inefficiencies and inequities. Overall, the joint bases reported partially consolidating 80 percent of their installation-support functions, but the extent of consolidation varied across the bases and among the various functions. None of t...

Defense Infrastructure: DOD Needs to Improve Its Efforts to Identify Unutilized and Underutilized Facilities

GAO-14-538: Published: Sep 8, 2014. Publicly Released: Sep 8, 2014.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has made some improvements, but OSD's utilization data continue to be incomplete and inaccurate; and data limitations affect the military departments' use of their databases to identify consolidation opportunities. GAO's analysis found that the percentage of total real property assets with a reported utilization rate in OSD's Real Property Assets Databa...

Military Bases: DOD Has Processes to Comply with Statutory Requirements for Closing or Realigning Installations

GAO-13-645: Published: Jun 27, 2013. Publicly Released: Jun 27, 2013.

The Department of Defense (DOD) and the military services have processes to meet statutory requirements for base closures and realignments, and use these processes hundreds of times each year to make basing decisions outside of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. These processes provide guidance for all types of basing actions, including, but not limited to base closures and realignme...

Defense Infrastructure: Improved Guidance Needed for Estimating Alternatively Financed Project Liabilities

GAO-13-337: Published: Apr 18, 2013. Publicly Released: Apr 18, 2013.

In the event of future base closure, the Department of Defense's (DOD) potential financial liabilities from alternatively financed projects will vary by project type and the language of its legal agreements. According to GAO's analysis of data reported by DOD, it had more than 550 such projects on more than 240 U.S. installations, as of September 30, 2011. 56 percent of these projects have been pu...

Military Bases: Opportunities Exist to Improve Future Base Realignment and Closure Rounds

GAO-13-149: Published: Mar 7, 2013. Publicly Released: Mar 7, 2013.

and RecommendsThe Department of Defense (DOD) developed and used a quantitative model known as the Cost of Base Realignment Actions (COBRA), which GAO has found to be a reasonable estimator for comparing potential costs and savings among candidate alternatives, to estimate the costs and savings associated with Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) 2005 recommendations. However, DOD’s process fo...

DOD Joint Bases: Management Improvements Needed to Achieve Greater Efficiencies

GAO-13-134: Published: Nov 15, 2012. Publicly Released: Nov 15, 2012.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has not developed or implemented a plan to guide joint bases in achieving cost savings and efficiencies. The Department of Defense (DOD) originally estimated saving $2.3 billion from joint basing over 20 years, but in the absence of a plan to drive savings, that estimate has fallen by almost 90 percent. OSD also does not yet have a fully developed metho...

Excess Facilities: DOD Needs More Complete Information and a Strategy to Guide Its Future Disposal Efforts

GAO-11-814: Published: Sep 19, 2011. Publicly Released: Sep 19, 2011.

GAO has designated the Department of Defense's (DOD) management of support infrastructure as a high risk area, in part because of challenges in reducing excess infrastructure. Operating and maintaining excess facilities consumes resources that could be eliminated from DOD's budget or used for other purposes. In response to direction in House Report 111-491, GAO reviewed DOD's (1) progress toward m...