The Army estimates that it will invest about $5 billion to implement systems to enable it to track and monitor all of its assets, but the investment is risky because it’s being made without a clear, integrated strategy, GAO has said.
It said the general fund enterprise business system, global combat support system-Army, and the logistics modernization program, are not being developed in the context of a well-defined Army-wide enterprise architecture.
As a result, the Army does not have an informed basis for determining if these systems will fit within the context of future Army business operations and will efficiently and effectively address the Army’s longstanding weaknesses associated with the lack of asset visibility, according to GAO-07-860.
It said the Army lacks a concept of operations that would describe at a high level, how the three business systems relate to each other in achieving the Army’s goal of total asset visibility – first articulated over 30 years ago — and how information flows from and through these systems.
Further, the Army’s lack of a concept of operations has contributed to its failure to take full advantage of business process reengineering opportunities that are available when using an enterprise resource planning solution, GAO said.
