Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Air Force Logistics Command's (AFLC) Logistics Management System (LMS) Modernization Program, focusing on cost savings and system evaluations.
GAO analyzed 1988 Air Force evaluations of the LMS program and found that AFLC: (1) could adequately support only $1.9 billion of the $12.2 billion in cost savings it originally expected in 1984; and (2) reduced the original program's scope, but did not determine the impact of this reduction on system functionality or expected program benefits. GAO also found that: (1) AFLC estimated that program acquisition costs would total nearly $1 billion; (2) total program costs would exceed $2 billion; (3) the scheduled completion date for the total program slipped from 1990 to 1994; (4) although regulations require AFLC to prepare evaluation plans early in the development process, AFLC has prepared such plans for only three of the nine LMS projects; (5) AFLC has not established the criteria or the techniques needed to evaluate the projects; (6) AFLC has not begun any final or interim system evaluations, even though it designated two systems as fully operational and six other systems have had operational sections for over 1 year; and (7) AFLC reported that it had not begun final evaluations on the two operational systems because one system did not have the data to operate and the other was still in development.
