The Department of Defense needs to better implement its
long-term strategy for achieving full visibility over and
access to its extensive spare parts inventory, the
Government Accountability Office has said.
It said that for 30 years Defense has been carrying out its
total asset visibility initiative aimed at being able to see
and access its entire inventory according to location,
movement and status, as well as to be able to identify
units, personnel, equipment and supplies.
In 1999 GAO recommended that DoD develop a strategic plan
to guide its efforts, but Defense instead continued to
rely on individual components to carry out the initiative,
which it plans to achieve by 2010 according to GAO-05-15.
It said that while recent GAO studies have found that the
military services and Defense Logistics Agency are
generally able to provide visibility over specific segments
of the inventory they sometimes are unable to share data
in real time, or close to it, either within their
organizations or across the department.