Summary: The Defense Department (DOD) spends about $11 billion each year on information technology to support a wide range of activities, from military maintenance to personnel management to health care, and tens of billions more on technology supporting sophisticated weaponry. However, DOD faces several serious management challenges to ensure that technology-driven processes and business systems provide an adequate level of serve and an appropriate rate of return on investments. Namely, it has lacked effective fundamental management and oversight controls for assessing the costs and risks of proposed information technology projects; ensuring that projects follow DOD's technical and data standards; measuring performance; and discontinuing projects shown to be technically flawed or not cost effective. Moreover, DOD must overcome long-standing organizational and cultural barriers to effective investment processes. DOD's planned information technology reforms represent positive first steps toward strengthening the Department's decision-making and oversight environment for information technology projects. However, for this effort to succeed where others have failed, DOD will need substantial follow through to translate these plans into concrete improvements.
