Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Air Force's best practices implementation schedule for the acquisition and distribution of secondary inventory items, focusing on: (1) the extent to which the schedule responds to the provisions of the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999; and (2) specific elements of a management framework needed for effective implementation and oversight of the Air Force's best practice initiatives. GAO noted that: (1) the Air Force's schedule is generally responsive to the act; (2) it describes 17 initiatives that address the acquisition and distribution of secondary items that the Air Force manages, and with one exception, provides for implementation of these initiatives to be completed within 5 years; (3) the initiatives are aimed at reducing the Air Force's infrastructure and improving the maintenance, information management, and acquisition processes; (4) though generally responsive to the act's requirements, the Air Force's schedule provides a management framework that lacks an overall strategy and specific elements needed to assess implementation progress, measure success, and identify needed changes; (5) while the schedule's initiatives are linked to higher level Air Force logistics goals and objectives, there is no strategy that ensures the efforts are coordinated, nor are specific performance goals and baselines established to measure the overall results of the initiatives; (6) in prior work, GAO noted that the lack of a detailed management framework contributed to the Department of Defense's (DOD) difficulty in implementing new initiatives; and (7) the Government Performance and Results Act offers a model for developing an effective management framework through the use of strategic plans and establishment of performance measures to assess the results of the initiatives and improve the likelihood of successful implementation.

NSIAD-00-2 Defense Inventory: Improved Management Framework Needed to Guide Air Force Best Practice Initiatives

This orders purpose is to publish a revision that aligns existing UMMIPS policy to higher headquarters directives.