Report to Congressional Committees

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO 

January 2006 DEFENSE 

ACQUISITIONS 

DOD Management 

Approach and 

Processes Not WellSuited to Support 

Development of 

Global Information 

Grid 

GAO-06-211 
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-211.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Michael J. 

Sullivan at (202) 512-4841or 

SullivanM@GAO.GOV. 

Highlights of GAO-06-211, a report to 

congressional committees 

January 2006

DEFENSE ACQUISITIONS 

DOD Management Approach and 

Processes Not Well-Suited to Support 

Development of Global Information Grid 

DOD’s management approach for the GIG—in which no one entity is clearly 

in charge or accountable for results—is not optimized to enforce investment 

decisions across the department. The DOD Chief Information Officer has 

lead responsibility for the GIG development effort, but this office has less 

influence on investment and program decisions than the military services 

and defense agencies, which determine investment priorities and manage 

program development efforts. Consequently, the services and defense 

agencies have relative freedom to invest or not invest in the types of joint, 

net-centric systems that are consistent with GIG objectives. Without a 

management approach optimized to enforce departmentwide investment 

decisions, DOD is at risk of not knowing whether the GIG is being developed 

within cost and schedule, whether risks are being adequately mitigated, or 

whether the GIG will provide a worthwhile return on DOD’s investment. 

The department’s three major decision-making processes are not structured 

to support crosscutting, departmentwide development efforts such as the 

GIG. In some significant respects, the department’s processes for setting 

requirements, allocating resources, and managing acquisitions encourage 

investing in systems on an individual service and defense agency basis. 

While the department has developed a new process for determining 

requirements, the framework to assess capability needs is still evolving; the 

new process is not yet identifying shortfalls and gaps in joint military 

capabilities on a departmentwide basis; and requirements-setting continues 

to be driven by service perspectives. In addition, the resource allocation 

process is structured in terms of individual service programs and outdated 

mission areas instead of crosscutting capabilities such as net-centricity, and 

it is not flexible enough to quickly accommodate requirements resulting 

from lessons learned or from rapidly emerging technologies. Also, the 

process for managing acquisitions is unsuited to developing a system of 

interdependent systems such as the GIG, and DOD has struggled to achieve 

service buy-in on joint-service development programs to address 

interoperability problems. Finally, the lack of integration among these three 

processes makes it difficult to ensure that development efforts are 

affordable and technically feasible. 

Department of Defense (DOD) 

officials currently estimate that the 

department will spend 

approximately $34 billion through 

2011 to develop the core network 

of the Global Information Grid 

(GIG), a large and complex 

undertaking intended to provide 

on-demand and real-time data and 

information to the warfighter. DOD 

views the GIG as the cornerstone 

of information superiority, a key 

enabler of network-centric warfare, 

and a pillar of defense 

transformation. 

A high degree of coordination and 

cooperation is needed to make the 

GIG a reality. In prior work GAO 

found that enforcing investment 

decisions across the military 

services and assuring management 

attention and oversight of the GIG 

effort were key management 

challenges facing DOD. This report 

assesses (1) the management 

approach that DOD is using to 

develop the GIG and (2) whether 

DOD’s three major decision-making 

processes support the development 

of a crosscutting, departmentwide 

investment, such as the GIG. 

 What GAO Recommends

GAO is recommending DOD adopt 

a management approach with more 

clearly defined leadership, 

authority to enforce investment 

decisions across organizational 

lines, and accountability for 

ensuring the objectives of the GIG 

are achieved. DOD concurred with 

GAO’s recommendation. 
Page i GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

Letter 1

Results in Brief 3 

Background 5 

DOD’s Management Approach for the GIG Is Not Optimized to 

Make Departmentwide Investment Decisions 9 

DOD’s Key Decision-Making Processes Are Not Designed to 

Support Investments in Crosscutting Efforts Such as the GIG 14 

Conclusion 27 

Recommendations for Executive Action 27 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 27 

Appendix I Scope and Methodology 29 

Appendix II Comments from the Department of Defense 31 

Appendix III Five Major Acquisitions Related to the Core GIG 

Network and Information Capability 33 

Appendix IV Joint Family of Concepts 34 

Appendix V GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 35 

Figures 

Figure 1: Scenario for Tracking Threats without Benefit of 

Interoperable Systems 6 

Figure 2: Comparison of Communications Exchanges with and 

without the GIG 8 

Contents 
Page ii GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

Abbreviations 

C4ISR Command, Control, Communications, Computers, 

 Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance 

CIO Chief Information Officer 

DOD Department of Defense 

FYDP Five Year Defense Plan; Future Years Defense Program 

GIG Global Information Grid 

GIG-BE Global Information Grid-Bandwidth Expansion 

IT Information Technology 

JBMC2 Joint Battle Management Command and Control 

JCIDS Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System 

JFC Joint Functional Concepts 

JOC Joint Operating Concepts 

JROC Joint Requirements Oversight Council 

JTRS Joint Tactical Radio System 

NCES Network Centric Enterprise Services 

OMB Office of Management and Budget 

PPBE Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution process 

PPBS Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System 

SINCGARS Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System 

TSAT Transformational Satellite Communications System 

WIN-T Warfighter Information Network-Tactical 

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Page 1 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

January 30, 2006 

The Honorable John Warner 

Chairman 

The Honorable Carl Levin 

Ranking Minority Member 

Committee on Armed Services 

United States Senate 

The Honorable Duncan L. Hunter 

Chairman 

The Honorable Ike Skelton 

Ranking Minority Member 

Committee on Armed Services 

House of Representatives 

Despite recent progress by the Department of Defense (DOD), military 

operations continue to be hampered by command, control, and 

communications systems that lack the ability to interoperate.1

 While DOD 

has been able to patch together disparate systems and networks to 

facilitate communications on the battlefield, retrofitting systems after they 

have already been fielded can be inefficient and is not sufficient to meet 

DOD’s stated goal of achieving a networked force where soldiers, weapon 

systems, platforms, and sensors are closely linked and able to operate 

seamlessly together. DOD believes it can solve these interoperability 

problems and achieve a networked force by developing the Global 

Information Grid (GIG). The GIG is a large and complex set of programs 

and initiatives intended to provide an Internet-like capability allowing 

users at virtually any location to access data on demand, share information 

in real time, collaborate in decision making regardless of which military 

service produced which weapon system, and have greater joint command 

of a battle situation. 

DOD began investing in the GIG in the late 1990s. We reported in 2004 that 

DOD planned to spend at least $21 billion through 2010 to develop a core 

 1

 GAO, Military Operations: Recent Campaigns Benefited from Improved 

Communications and Technology, but Barriers to Continued Progress Remain, 

GAO-04-547 (Washington, D.C.: June 2004). 

United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, DC 20548 
Page 2 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

network for the GIG.2 Today, DOD officials estimate that the GIG 

infrastructure will cost approximately $34 billion through 2011.3

 DOD’s 

investment in the GIG will extend far beyond development of the core 

network, as DOD also intends to integrate the majority of its existing and 

planned weapon systems, information technology systems, and other 

related systems into the GIG over the long term. Accomplishing these 

objectives involves developing and advancing new technologies, reaching 

consensus on common standards and requirements, aligning systems with 

the attributes of the GIG, and assessing whether the GIG is providing a 

worthwhile return on investment. 

In prior work, we identified management and investment challenges, 

operational challenges, and technical challenges DOD faces in 

implementing the GIG.4

 We found that enforcing investment decisions 

across the military services and assuring management attention and 

oversight were key challenges facing DOD. In this report, conducted under 

the authority of the Comptroller General, we further examine management 

challenges by (1) assessing the management approach that DOD is using 

to develop the GIG and (2) addressing whether DOD’s three major 

decision-making processes support the development of a crosscutting, 

departmentwide investment, such as the GIG. These major decisionmaking processes are the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development 

System, which DOD uses to identify, assess, and prioritize military 

capability needs; the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution 

process, which guides how DOD allocates resources; and the Defense 

Acquisition System, which governs how DOD acquires weapon and 

information technology systems. We are addressing this report to you 

because we believe it will be of interest to your committees as you 

consider DOD’s requests to authorize and appropriate funds for 

developing the GIG. 

To assess DOD’s management approach for the GIG and the extent to 

which the department’s primary decision-making processes support the 

GIG, we collected and reviewed (1) related legislation, directives, 

 2

 GAO, Defense Acquisitions: The Global Information Grid and Challenges Facing Its 

Implementation, GAO-04-858 (Washington, D.C.: July 2004). 

3

 DOD officials confirmed that most of the difference between the estimate reported by 

GAO in 2004 and the $34 billion figure reported here can be attributed to greater spending 

for information assurance activities. 

4 GAO-04-858. 
Page 3 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

instructions, and guidance; (2) DOD policies and guidance related to the 

GIG and network-centric (or “net-centric”) governance; and (3) 

programmatic and technical documents pertaining to core GIG systems. 

We also conducted a review of relevant literature, analyzing studies on 

net-centric warfare, systems interoperability, and DOD management and 

investment decision making. These studies were collected from defense 

and public policy research databases as well as the online collections of 

DOD organizations (such as the Defense Science Board and the Joint 

C4ISR Decision Support Center), individual think tanks, and congressional 

agencies. We also drew upon previous GAO reports on defense 

acquisition, information technology investments, and interoperability 

issues. We conducted interviews with and received briefings from officials 

with a number of DOD organizations (including the Office of the Secretary 

of Defense; the Joint Staff; and the three military services—the 

Departments of the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy) that have 

responsibility for achieving the GIG. We also interviewed several subject 

matter experts from academic, think tank, or consulting organizations who 

have senior-level DOD experience or who have recently written on the 

operation of DOD and its key decision-making processes. Additional 

information on our scope and methodology is in appendix I. We conducted 

our work from December 2004 through January 2006 in accordance with 

generally accepted government auditing standards. 

DOD’s decentralized management approach for the GIG is not optimized 

for the development of this type of joint effort, which depends on a high 

degree of coordination and cooperation. Clear leadership and the 

authority to enforce investment decisions across organizational lines are 

needed to achieve the level of coordination and cooperation required, but 

no one entity is clearly in charge of the GIG or equipped with the requisite 

authority, and no one entity is accountable for results. For example, DOD 

assigned overall leadership responsibility for the GIG to the DOD Chief 

Information Officer, to include responsibility for developing, maintaining, 

and enforcing compliance with the GIG architecture; advising DOD 

leadership on GIG requirements; and providing enterprisewide oversight 

of the development, integration, and implementation of the GIG. However, 

the Chief Information Officer generally has less influence on investment 

and program decisions than the military services and defense agencies, 

which determine investment priorities and manage program development 

efforts. Consequently, the services and defense agencies have relative 

freedom to align or not align their investments with GIG objectives. A 

result of this shared responsibility for the GIG is that the various offices 

and programs managing development of initiatives related to the GIG lack 

Results in Brief 
Page 4 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

a clear understanding of what the GIG concept is and neglect to 

coordinate with each other. Without a management approach optimized to 

enforce investment decisions across the department, DOD is at risk of not 

knowing whether the GIG is being developed within cost, schedule, and 

performance objectives. In prior work, GAO has stated that a 

decentralized management structure and the absence of an effective 

central enforcement authority are leading causes for the interoperability 

problems experienced in past military operations. We have also reported 

that an essential ingredient for better ensuring that overall DOD business 

transformation is implemented and sustained is to create a Chief 

Management Officer position to address key stewardship responsibilities 

in areas such as information technology. 

In addition, DOD’s major decision-making processes are not structured to 

support crosscutting, departmentwide efforts such as the GIG. Overall, 

these processes were established to support service- and platformoriented programs rather than joint, net-centric programs, and in some 

significant respects, they remain configured in this way. The Joint 

Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) was 

implemented in 2003 to enhance the department’s ability to determine 

requirements for joint military capabilities, but its analytical framework is 

still evolving, and it is not yet providing assessments of capability needs on 

a departmentwide basis. Consequently, JCIDS is of limited use for the time 

being in terms of developing a departmentwide investment strategy for the 

net-centric systems critical to the GIG. The Planning, Programming, 

Budgeting, and Execution process does not foster integration of the 

military services’ and defense agencies’ budgets to allow for a more 

cooperative, joint investment approach for the acquisition of joint 

capabilities. In addition, the resource allocation process, which has tended 

to favor longer-term weapon system development efforts, is not flexible 

enough to accommodate emerging requirements resulting from lessons 

learned in recent military operations or the rapidly advancing information 

technologies that are characteristic of command, control, and 

communications systems. DOD’s acquisition process continues to move 

programs forward without sufficient knowledge that technologies can 

work as intended; consequently, weapon systems cost more and take 

longer to develop than originally planned and deliver less capability than 

initially promised. In addition, with increased emphasis on joint, netcentric capabilities, key transformational systems under development 

depend on capabilities being provided by other acquisition programs, and 

they depend on integrated architectures and common standards as a 

foundation for interoperability. However, the acquisition process is not 

well-suited to managing interdependencies among programs and fostering 
Page 5 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

joint-service cooperation in development of weapon and information 

systems. Finally, the lack of integration among these three processes 

makes it difficult to ensure that development efforts are affordable and 

technically feasible. 

We are recommending DOD adopt a management approach with more 

clearly defined leadership, authority to enforce investment decisions 

across organizational lines, and accountability for ensuring the objectives 

of the GIG are achieved. In written comments on a draft of this report, 

DOD concurred with our findings and recommendation (DOD’s letter is 

reprinted in app. II). 

DOD has increasingly emphasized joint military operations where, to the 

extent possible, service components are closely aligned and employed as a 

single joint force. To function effectively as a joint force, DOD has come to 

recognize the vital role of achieving information superiority over its 

adversaries by having better access to, and greater ability to share, 

information across the battlefield. In the late 1990s, the department began 

to articulate a vision for network-centric (or “net-centric”) warfare in 

which networking military forces improves information sharing and 

collaboration, which leads to enhanced situational awareness. Enhanced 

situational awareness enables more rapid, effective decisionmaking, which 

in turn enables improved efficiency and speed of execution and results in 

dramatically increased combat power and mission effectiveness. 

A high degree of interoperability is required to achieve battlefield 

information superiority. DOD defines interoperability as the ability of 

systems, units, or forces to exchange data, information, materiel, and 

services to enable them to operate effectively together.5

 A lack of 

interoperability can make it difficult to hit time-critical targets and 

distinguish “friend” from “foe.” Figure 1 shows a scenario in which a seabased system and a land-based system are tracking aircraft and are unable 

to integrate their views of a battlefield. This lack of interoperability can 

delay U.S. military response or contribute to a lethal mistake involving 

U.S. personnel and equipment. 

 5

 DOD Directive 4630.5, Interoperability and Supportability of Information Technology (IT) 

and National Security Systems (NSS) (May 5, 2004). 

Background 
Page 6 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

Figure 1: Scenario for Tracking Threats without Benefit of Interoperable Systems 

DOD has recognized that interoperable systems are critical to conducting 

joint military operations and that patching systems after the fact to 

improve communications is inefficient, and the department has 

established policies to promote systems interoperability. However, GAO 

and DOD’s Inspector General have reported in the past that these efforts 

have not been very effective. For example, in the first of a series of reports 

beginning in 2002, DOD’s Inspector General found that policies governing 

systems interoperability were inconsistent and that without consistent 

Enemy

aircraft

Friendly

aircraft

U.S. land-based system

U.S. sea-based system

Scenario

Correctly detects one enemy 

aircraft and one friendly aircraft DOD systems

cannot talk to

each other

directly to

resolve

discrepancies

What Sea-Based System Sees

Source: DOD (data); GAO (analysis and presentation).

Detects only one aircraft and

does not know whether the

aircraft is friendly or not

What Land-Based System Sees
Page 7 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

guidance the department was at risk of developing systems that lack the 

ability to fully interoperate.6

 In 2003, we found that DOD’s process for 

certifying systems interoperability did not work effectively for groundsurface-based intelligence processing systems.7

 In addition, DOD officials 

have said that added emphasis on joint operations and reliance on 

information technology creates an increasing requirement for more 

systems to exchange information, which in turn makes achieving 

interoperability among systems increasingly complex. 

DOD views the GIG as the cornerstone of information superiority, a key 

enabler of net-centric warfare, and a pillar of defense transformation. DOD 

defines the GIG as the globally interconnected, end-to-end set of 

information capabilities, associated processes, and personnel for 

collecting, processing, storing, disseminating, and managing information.8

The GIG’s many systems are expected to make up a secure, reliable 

network to enable users to access and share information at virtually any 

location and at anytime. Communications satellites, next-generation 

radios, and a military installations-based network with significantly 

expanded bandwidth will pave the way for a new paradigm in which DOD 

expects to achieve information superiority over adversaries, much the 

same way as the Internet has transformed industry and society on a global 

scale. Rather than striving for interoperability through efforts to establish 

direct information exchanges between individual systems, the focus of the 

new paradigm will be to ensure that all systems can connect to the 

network based on common standards and protocols. Figure 2 shows a 

general depiction of how DOD enables data exchanges in systems that 

lack the necessary connections and how DOD expects the GIG to break 

through such limitations. 

 6

 DOD Inspector General, Implementation of Interoperability and Information Assurance 

Policies for Acquisition of DoD Weapon Systems, D-2003-011 (October 2002). 

7

 GAO, Defense Acquisitions: Steps Needed to Ensure Interoperability of Systems That 

Process Intelligence Data, GAO-03-329 (Washington, D.C.: March 2003). 

8

 DOD Directive 8100.1, Global Information Grid (GIG) Overarching Policy, Enclosure 2, 

E2.1.1.1 (Sept. 19, 2002). 
Page 8 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

Figure 2: Comparison of Communications Exchanges with and without the GIG 

A, B, C, and D and other systems are interconnected through a secure network

and can exchange data from virtually any location and at any time

B

Network-Centric Connectivity

A

D

C

DOD Believes the GIG Would Offer High Degree of Interoperability

DOD’s Current Systems Have Limited Interoperability

Point-to-Point Connectivity

Work-around required to 

enable communication

between A and D

 Data exchange 

 between A and B

B first has to go through C

A D

C

GIG network

Source: DOD (data); GAO (analysis and presentation).
Page 9 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

DOD has adopted a two-pronged approach to realizing the GIG: (1) invest 

in a set of new systems and capabilities to build a core infrastructure for 

the eventual GIG network (an overview of the five major acquisitions 

related to the GIG’s core network are listed in app. III) and (2) populate 

the network with weapon and information systems that are able to 

connect when the core network infrastructure becomes available. 

The effort to make the GIG a reality represents a different, inherently joint 

type of development challenge that requires a high degree of coordination 

and cooperation, but DOD is using a management approach that is not 

optimized for this type of challenge. Responsibility for developing and 

implementing the GIG resides with numerous entities, with no one entity 

clearly in charge or accountable for investment decisions. Because the 

GIG will comprise a system of interdependent systems, it needs clearly 

identified leadership that has the authority to enforce decisions that cut 

across organizational lines. Without a management approach optimized to 

enforce investment decisions across the department, DOD is at risk of 

continuing to develop and acquire systems in a stovepiped and 

uncoordinated manner and of not knowing whether the GIG is being 

developed within cost and schedule, whether risks are being adequately 

mitigated, and whether the GIG will provide a worthwhile return on DOD’s 

investment. Consequently, interoperability problems could continue to 

hamper DOD in fielding a joint, net-centric force. 

Development of the GIG is essentially a shared responsibility in DOD, with 

no single entity both equipped with authority to make investment 

decisions and held accountable for results. For example, as laid out in 

policy directives, DOD’s Chief Information Officer has overall 

responsibility for leadership and direction of the GIG. This includes 

developing, maintaining, and enforcing compliance with the GIG 

architecture; advising DOD leadership on GIG requirements; providing 

enterprisewide oversight of the development, integration, and 

implementation of the GIG; monitoring and evaluating the performance of 

information technology and national security system programs; and 

advising the Secretary of Defense and the heads of DOD components on 

whether to continue, modify, or terminate such programs.9

 However, the 

 9

 DOD Directive 8100.1, Global Information Grid Overarching Policy (Sept. 19, 2002); DOD 

Directive 5144.1, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information 

Integration/DOD Chief Information Officer (May 2, 2005). 

DOD’s Management 

Approach for the GIG 

Is Not Optimized to 

Make 

Departmentwide 

Investment Decisions 
Page 10 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

Office of the Chief Information Officer generally has less influence on 

investment and program decisions than the services and defense agencies, 

which determine investment priorities and manage program development 

efforts. Consequently, the services and defense agencies have relative 

freedom to invest or not invest in the types of joint, net-centric systems 

that are consistent with GIG objectives. The end result of this shared 

responsibility is that neither the CIO nor the military services and defense 

agencies can be held fully accountable for the department’s success or 

failure in developing the GIG. 

More broadly, another result of this environment of shared responsibility 

is that the various offices and programs that are managing initiatives 

related to the GIG do so in a disparate manner. For example, a 2002 DOD 

study found that there was little unity of effort among the 80 separate 

initiatives and actions under way associated with joint command and 

control.10 The next year, DOD’s Defense Science Board reported that joint 

warfighting needs—such as joint battle management and joint intelligence, 

surveillance, and reconnaissance—are “neglected or spread in an 

uncoordinated fashion across multiple service and defense agency 

programs.”11 In 2004, the DOD Inspector General found that DOD lacked a 

strategy to integrate its net-centric initiatives, including clearly defined 

net-centric goals and organizational roles and responsibilities.12 In 

responding to this study, DOD’s Deputy Chief Information Officer (CIO) 

indicated that improvements could be made in the department’s guidance 

and approach to achieving net-centric goals, but that elements of a 

strategic plan have been or are being developed. However, according to 

the study, management comments from other DOD entities “clearly 

illustrate that DoD components needed leadership and strategic guidance 

and were unaware that the...[CIO] had the lead for network-centric 

concepts.” 13 The study also found that there was a lack of common 

 10 Joint Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and 

Reconnaissance (Joint C4ISR) Decision Support Center (DSC), Joint Requirements 

Acquisition Study, Closeout Report (July 15, 2002), 13. 

11 Defense Science Board. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Enabling 

Joint Force Capabilities, (August 2003), 9. 

12 DOD Inspector General, Joint Warfighting and Readiness: Management of Network 

Centric Warfare Within the Department of Defense, D-2004-091 (June 22, 2004), 7. 

13 D-2004-091, 13. The management entities are Office of Force Transformation, Joint Staff, 

Department of the Navy, U.S. Strategic Command, and the Defense Information Systems 

Agency. 
Page 11 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

understanding across DOD of what constitutes net-centric warfare—of 

which the GIG is a key enabler. Officials we interviewed in the Office of 

the Chief Information Officer stated that there is also a lack of common 

understanding throughout DOD about what is included in the GIG. DOD’s 

management approach to realizing joint, interoperable capabilities puts 

DOD at risk of duplicated efforts and suboptimal investment outcomes for 

command, control, and communications systems. 

Almost 20 years ago, we identified DOD’s decentralized management 

structure and the absence of an effective central enforcement authority for 

joint interoperability as two causes for joint command, control, and 

communications interoperability problems experienced in past military 

operations. We concluded that solving the interoperability problem would 

require “a great deal” of cooperation among the services and a willingness 

among them to pursue interoperability even when it conflicts with their 

traditional practices.14 In 1993, we found DOD had not made significant 

progress in improving on this situation. We recommended that DOD 

establish a joint program office with directive authority and funding 

controls for acquiring command, control, and communications systems 

and that DOD consolidate responsibility for interoperability in U.S. 

Atlantic Command (now U.S. Joint Forces Command).15 DOD responded 

that our recommendations would unnecessarily complicate DOD 

management, and DOD stated that planned and recently implemented 

policy, procedural, and organizational changes intended to address the 

problem needed time to take effect. 

In recent years, however, DOD has recognized that its approach to 

developing and fielding command, control, and communications systems 

was somewhat disjointed. In an effort to improve the situation, DOD 

tasked Joint Forces Command in 2003 to lead the development of 

advanced, integrated joint battle management command and control 

(JBMC2) capabilities departmentwide. While Joint Forces Command was 

given responsibilities to lead this effort, it does not control the resources 

for materiel solutions, and the command may not have sufficient influence 

over the services’ resource decisions to ensure the assessment framework 

it has developed for improving JBMC2 capabilities will be executed 

 14 GAO, Interoperability: DOD’s Efforts to Achieve Interoperability Among C3 Systems, 

GAO/NSIAD-87-124 (Washington, D.C.: April 1987).

15 GAO, Joint Military Operations: DOD’s Renewed Emphasis on Interoperability Is 

Important but Not Adequate, GAO/NSIAD-94-47 (Washington, D.C.: October 1993). 
Page 12 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

effectively. The framework for specific mission areas within JBMC2 will 

begin to be implemented in 2006, but formal agreements involving 

resourcing and level of service participation in these assessments have 

not yet been worked out. In addition, in 2004, the Joint Staff initiated the 

Net-Centric Operating Environment project in part to improve 

coordination of the GIG core network systems currently under 

development. The Joint Staff has proposed options to establish a stronger 

joint management structure for these systems, such as placing them under 

a single acquisition authority, and this analysis is being considered as part 

of DOD’s Quadrennial Defense Review effort. In the meantime, a study 

released in 2005 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a 

bipartisan think tank, reiterates the need for DOD to instill a greater joint 

focus in its management approach to achieving systems interoperability by 

transferring budget and acquisition authority for joint command, control, 

and communications from the services to a single joint entity. 

In the broader context of defense transformation—of which the GIG is a 

key component—we have pressed DOD to adopt a more centralized 

management approach to integrate and improve its business processes, 

human capital, and military capabilities. In 2004, we reported that no one 

person or entity had overarching and ongoing leadership responsibilities 

or accountability for the department’s transformation efforts,16 and we 

recommended that DOD establish clear leadership and a formal 

crosscutting transformation team with the responsibility for overseeing 

and integrating DOD’s transformation strategy and the authority to 

perform these responsibilities. DOD disagreed with our recommendations, 

indicating that the Secretary of Defense provides the leadership needed 

and that a crosscutting transformation team would represent an unneeded 

and confusing bureaucratic layer. However, we pointed out that (1) the 

day-to-day demands placed on the Secretary of Defense make it difficult 

for him to personally maintain the oversight, focus, and momentum 

needed to sustain transformation efforts and (2) that without a 

crosscutting team, DOD has no routine vehicle for maintaining a continued 

focus on transformation goals and no mechanism for resolving 

implementation issues that may arise. Similarly, to address problems DOD 

 16 GAO, Military Transformation: Clear Leadership, Accountability, and Management 

Tools Are Needed to Enhance DOD’s Efforts to Transform Military Capabilities, 

GAO-05-70 (Washington, D.C.: December 2004), 3-4. 
Page 13 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

has long faced in managing its business systems17 and to guide the 

department’s business transformation efforts, we have proposed that DOD 

establish a more centralized management structure to control the 

allocation and execution of funds for DOD business systems.18 Specifically, 

due to the complexity and long-term nature of business transformation 

efforts, we reported that strong and sustained executive leadership is 

needed if DOD is to succeed. We believe one way to ensure strong, 

sustained leadership for DOD’s business management reform efforts 

would be to create a full-time, senior executive position for a chief 

management official, who would serve as the Deputy Secretary of Defense 

for Management. This position would serve as a strategic integrator to 

elevate and institutionalize the attention essential for addressing key 

stewardship responsibilities, such as strategic planning, enterprise 

architecture development and implementation, information technology 

(IT), and financial management, while facilitating the overall business 

management transformation within DOD. DOD’s position has been that the 

Deputy Secretary of Defense has the requisite position, authority, and 

purview to perform the functions of a Chief Management Officer. Although 

DOD has recently begun taking some positive steps to transform the 

department’s business operations, including establishing the Business 

Transformation Agency in 2005, we continue to believe that a Chief 

Management Officer position may better ensure that overall business 

transformation is implemented and sustained. 

 17 These would include business systems related to acquisition and contract management, 

financial management, supply chain management, support infrastructure management, 

human capital management, and other key areas. 

18 GAO, DOD Business Transformation: Sustained Leadership Needed to Address Longstanding Financial and Business Management Problems, GAO-05-723T (Washington, 

D.C.: June 2005), 4; GAO, Defense Management: Foundational Steps Being Taken to 

Manage DOD Business Systems Modernization, but Much Remains to be Accomplished 

to Effect True Business Transformation, GAO-06-234T (Washington, D.C.: November 

2005), 28. 
Page 14 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

DOD’s major decision-making processes are not structured to support 

crosscutting, departmentwide efforts such as the GIG. In some significant 

respects, the processes remain configured for investing in weapon and 

information systems on an individual service and defense agency basis. In 

addition, the department’s new process for determining requirements is 

still evolving, and it is not yet identifying shortfalls and gaps in joint 

military capabilities on a departmentwide basis. The resource allocation 

process remains structured in terms of individual service programs and 

outdated mission areas instead of crosscutting capabilities such as netcentricity, and it is inflexible in terms of accommodating emerging nearterm requirements and rapidly advancing technologies. DOD’s acquisition 

process continues to move programs forward without sufficient 

knowledge that their technologies can work as intended; consequently, 

systems cost more and take longer to develop than originally planned and 

deliver less capability than initially promised. In addition, the acquisition 

process is not well suited to managing interdependencies among programs 

and fostering joint-service cooperation in development of weapon and 

information systems. Finally, the lack of integration among the three 

processes makes it difficult to ensure that development efforts are 

affordable and technically feasible. 

The three processes assessed in this report are the Joint Capabilities 

Integration and Development System (JCIDS); the Planning, Programming, 

Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process; and the Defense Acquisition 

System. 

Implemented in 2003,19 JCIDS is intended to enhance the process DOD 

uses to identify, assess, and prioritize joint military requirements, but 

service perspectives continue to drive requirements setting, a condition 

that has tended to impede the development of interoperable systems in the 

past.20 JCIDS is not yet identifying shortfalls and gaps in existing and 

projected joint military capabilities on a departmentwide basis, and the 

analytical framework that underpins JCIDS (capability-based assessments) 

is still evolving. Without crosscutting, department-level assessments, DOD 

 19 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction, Joint Capabilities Integration and 

Development System, CJCSI 3170.01E (May 11, 2005). The original instruction was CJCSI 

3170.01C (June 24, 2003). 

20 See GAO, Challenges and Risks Associated with the Joint Tactical Radio System 

Program, GAO-03-879R (Washington, D.C.: August 2003), 2 and 22; Joint C4ISR Decision 

Support Center (July 15, 2002), iii and 17. 

DOD’s Key DecisionMaking Processes Are 

Not Designed to 

Support Investments 

in Crosscutting 

Efforts Such as the 

GIG 

JCIDS Process Not Yet 

Providing Departmentwide 

Assessment of Military 

Requirements 
Page 15 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

is limited in its ability to develop a departmentwide investment strategy to 

support development of the net-centric systems critical to the GIG. 

JCIDS replaced the approximately 30-year-old Requirements Generation 

System, which DOD states frequently resulted in systems that were service 

rather than joint-focused, programs that duplicated each other, and 

systems that were not interoperable. Under this process, requirements 

were often developed by the services as stand-alone solutions to counter 

specific threats and scenarios. In contrast, JCIDS is designed to identify 

the broad set of capabilities that may be required to address the security 

environment of the 21st century. In addition, requirements under the 

JCIDS’ approach are intended to be developed from the “top-down,” that 

is, starting with the national military strategy, whereas the former process 

was “bottom up,” with requirements growing out of the individual services’ 

unique strategic visions and lacking clear linkage to the national military 

strategy. The Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) has overall 

responsibility for JCIDS and is supported by eight Functional Capabilities 

Boards,21 which lead the capabilities-based assessment process. 

The requirements process remains service-focused to a significant extent. 

For example, the four members of the Joint Requirements Oversight 

Council are the services’ Vice Chiefs of Staff and the Assistant 

Commandant of the Marine Corps,22 an arrangement some studies contend 

grants too much influence to the services in setting requirements. The 

services are force providers—they supply the forces and develop the 

systems for military operations—but combatant commanders conduct 

joint military operations and thus represent the demand side of the 

requirements process. Combatant commanders are not, however, 

members of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, and analyses 

conducted both prior to and following the implementation of JCIDS 

recommend either replacing the current members with representatives 

from the combatant commands or enlarging the Council to include such 

 21The eight boards are Command and Control, Battlespace Awareness, Focused Logistics, 

Force Management, Force Protection, Force Application, Net-Centric, and Joint Training. 

22 The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the JROC Chairman, though the functions of 

the JROC chairman are delegated to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The 

JROC Secretary is the Joint Staff Director for Force Structure, Resources, & Assessment 

(J-8). 
Page 16 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

representatives.23 DOD has included representatives from the combatant 

commands on the Functional Capabilities Boards, along with 

representatives from nine other organizations24 (under the former 

requirements process, only representatives from the military services and 

the Defense Intelligence Agency served in a similar capacity). DOD 

officials indicate, however, that combatant commander participation on 

the boards is in reality limited and of ongoing concern, and a July 2005 

Joint Forces Command briefing indicates that, so far, the combatant 

commands’ requirements do not drive the requirements process. In May 

2005, DOD introduced a new mechanism for the combatant commands to 

identify capability gaps,25 and a DOD official told us the combatant 

commands are embracing this opportunity. However, the official also 

indicated that much requirements setting continues to be driven by the 

services at this point and that it is unclear how the services will respond to 

this type of input from the combatant commands. 

The JCIDS process is still evolving. A key enabler for capability 

assessments under JCIDS are joint concepts, which are visualizations of 

future operations that describe how a commander might employ 

capabilities to achieve desired effects and objectives. The majority of the 

joint concepts have completed an initial phase of development, but they 

continue to be evaluated and revised.26 These concepts are intended to 

 23 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Beyond Goldwater-Nichols: U.S. 

Government and Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era, Phase 2 Report (July 2005). M. 

Thomas Davis, “The JROC: Doing What? Going Where?” National Security Studies 

Quarterly (Summer 1998); Joint Forces Command point paper on combatant command 

input to capability development (July 25, 2005). In recent testimony before Congress, Chief 

Executive Officer of CSIS and former Deputy Secretary of Defense John J. Hamre 

recommended giving representation on the Council to the combatant commanders: 

Testimony before the Subcommittee on AirLand, Senate Armed Services Committee 

(Washington, D.C.: November 2005), 4. 

24Offices of the Under Secretary of Acquisition, Technology, & Logistics; Under Secretary of 

Intelligence; Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller; Under Secretary of the Air Force 

(Space); and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information 

Integration/DOD Chief Information Officer; Director, Program Analysis & Evaluation; 

Mission Requirements Board; the military services; and the Defense Intelligence Agency. 

25 The Joint Capabilities Document. 

26 The Joint Operating Concepts are currently being revised and are expected to be 

submitted for approval by June 2006; subsequently, Joint Functional Concepts will be 

revised over the following year. Most of the more detailed concepts—Joint Integrating 

Concepts— have also completed an initial phase of development and also continue to be 

tested, but it is not clear when or if they will be further refined. See appendix IV for a 

description of each joint concept. 
Page 17 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

describe future capability needs in sufficient detail to conduct a 

capabilities-based assessment, which is the methodology through which 

capability gaps and excesses are identified. A Joint Staff official states that 

capability-based assessment continues to be refined daily and has yet to 

produce a common framework or set of rules.27 At present, it can take 

several years to conduct a capabilities-based assessment under JCIDS, 

which is too slow according to a Joint Staff official associated with the 

process. However, the biggest challenge posed by a change such as JCIDS 

may be a cultural one: Joint Staff officials stated that the services are 

struggling with JCIDS, and the officials observed that the new process 

requires the services to change their behavior and think in a joint way. 

JCIDS is not yet functioning as envisioned to define gaps and 

redundancies in existing and future military capabilities across the 

department and to identify solutions to improve joint capabilities. At this 

point, requirements continue to be defined largely from the “bottom up”—

by the services—although DOD uses the JCIDS framework to assess the 

services’ proposals and push a joint perspective. The importance of 

defining capability needs and solutions from a crosscutting, departmentlevel perspective was highlighted in a prominent 2004 study chartered by 

the Secretary of Defense, which stated that “a service focus does not 

provide an accurate picture of joint needs, nor does it provide a consistent 

view of priorities and acceptable risks across DOD.” 28 The study observed 

that the analytical capability for determining requirements largely resides 

in the military services, and it recommended that analyses of both joint 

needs and solutions to meet those needs be conducted at the departmentlevel (in collaboration with the combatant commands, Joint Staff, defense 

agencies, services, and Office of the Secretary of Defense). 

 27 Under JCIDS, the capability-based methodology consists of four stages: a Functional 

Area Analysis, which is to produce a prioritized list of capabilities and tasks needed to 

achieve military objectives; a Functional Needs Analysis, which is to produce a list of 

capability gaps that require solutions and the relative priority of the gaps identified; a 

Functional Solution Analysis, which identifies potential approaches to providing the 

capability needed; and a Post Independent Analysis, which provides for an independent 

review of the Functional Solution Analysis results. 

28 Joint Defense Capabilities Study Team (DOD), Joint Defense Capabilities Study: 

Improving DoD Strategic Planning, Resourcing and Execution to Satisfy Joint 

Capabilities. Final Report (Jan. 2004), iii. 
Page 18 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

The resource allocation process is not structured to facilitate investments 

in crosscutting capabilities such as the GIG. Unlike JCIDS, the resource 

allocation process is structured in terms of individual service and defense 

agency programs rather than in terms of joint capability areas, such as netcentricity. In this structure, the military services have come to dominate in 

the development of the DOD budget, designing their programs and budgets 

based more on individual, service-focused systems than on crosscutting 

capabilities with broad joint utility. In part, this situation reflects the 

persistence of a service-centric culture rooted in the services’ 

interpretation of their Title 10 authority to organize, train, and equip 

military forces.29 This resource allocation culture has contributed to DOD’s 

interoperability problems and made it difficult to capitalize on rapid 

advancements in information technology that can improve joint 

operational effectiveness. 

The predecessor to PPBE was the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting 

System (PPBS), established in the early 1960s to be DOD’s central 

strategic planning, program development, and resource allocation 

decision-making process. DOD expected the system to align the 

department’s investments in defense programs with overarching national 

security objectives and military strategy, integrating the previously 

unrelated programs and budgets of the military services into a coherent 

program and budget for DOD as a whole. One of the central products of 

this system was the multiyear Five Year Defense Plan (FYDP),30 which the 

Secretary of Defense could use to assess each military service’s 

contribution to DOD’s overall capability in crosscutting mission areas, 

termed as Major Force Programs.31 By categorizing service programs into a 

structure of Major Force Programs, the FYDP was intended to give the 

Secretary of Defense visibility over the totality of DOD’s capabilities, and 

 29 Sections 3013, 5013, and 8013 of Title 10 grant authority to the Secretaries of the Army, 

the Navy, and the Air Force, respectively, to conduct all affairs of their Departments 

including recruiting, organizing, supplying, equipping, training, servicing, mobilizing, demobilizing, administering, maintaining, and military construction and maintenance. 

30 Initially conceived as a 5-year plan, the FYDP has subsequently been extended to 6 years 

and re-designated the Future Years Defense Program. 

31 Original Major Force Programs were Strategic Forces; General Purpose Forces; 

Command, Control, Communications, and Space; Airlift and Sealift; Guard and Reserve 

Forces; Research and Development; Central Supply and Maintenance; Training, Medical, 

General Personnel Account; Administration and Associated Activities; and Support to 

Other Nations. An eleventh Major Force Program, Special Operations Forces, was 

established in response to congressional direction in 1987. 

Resource Allocation 

Process Does Not Support 

Crosscutting Investments 
Page 19 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

thus enable the Secretary to make trade-off decisions among service 

investments in support of overall DOD objectives. The PPBS process fell 

short of these expectations in several respects: 

• The services and defense agencies tended to receive the Secretary’s 

planning guidance after they had begun preparing their proposed 

programs and budgets, and the guidance has been criticized for not 

clearly articulating DOD funding priorities, reflecting resource 

constraints, containing performance measures, or providing enough 

detail to be useful. Together, these factors contributed to the services’ 

latitude to define their own investment priorities independent of the 

Secretary’s stated objectives. 

• The Office of the Secretary of Defense reviews of the services’ program 

and budget submissions occurred late in the process. As a result, 

opportunities to build joint priorities (such as interoperable systems) 

into the services’ program and budget submissions were limited, and 

joint initiatives were often addressed late in the process when it was 

more difficult to make changes. 

• PPBS was structured to allocate resources to meet longer-term, more 

predictable needs, which made it difficult to accommodate (1) nearterm requirements such as those identified by combatant commanders 

based on lessons learned from recent or ongoing military operations 

and (2) rapidly advancing technologies. For example, commercially 

developed information technology tends to advance quickly, and it has 

been difficult to plan for advances in these technologies through the 

normal planning and budget process.32

• PPBS was not well integrated with the requirements determination and 

acquisitions processes to ensure that development efforts were 

affordable and technically feasible. For example, more acquisition 

programs are started than DOD can afford, with the result that many 

programs must compete for funding.33 This situation in turn creates 

incentives to produce overly optimistic cost and schedule estimates 

and to over promise capability. 

 32 Defense Science Board, Enabling Joint Force Capabilities, 7. 

33 GAO, Best Practices: Better Support of Weapon System Program Managers Needed to 

Improve Outcomes, GAO-06-110 (Washington, D.C.: November 2005), 5. 
Page 20 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

• The Major Force Programs that comprise the FYDP have changed little 

since the inception of PPBS in the early 1960s, despite changes in the 

operational environment and the emergence of strategic objectives 

such as the GIG. Some observers have recommended that the major 

program areas be substantially reconfigured to focus service programs 

on transformation initiatives, including creating a Major Force Program 

dedicated to C4ISR programs.34 In prior work, GAO also found that the 

FYDP did not provide visibility over some high-priority items, including 

information technology.35 Information technology investments as an 

area of funding are difficult to identify in the DOD budget, and the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense reports separately to Congress and 

OMB on DOD’s information technology expenditures. However, we 

have found material inconsistencies, inaccuracies, or omissions that 

limit the reliability of this reporting effort.36

In an effort to streamline the process and make it more efficient, DOD 

revised PPBS in 2001 to make department-level reviews of service and 

defense agency programs and budgets concurrent rather than sequential. 

In 2003 DOD further revised the process to increase its effectiveness and 

emphasize budget execution by requiring a full budget development cycle 

every other year rather than every year. DOD named the revised process 

the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution process. These 

recent changes have not addressed some of the characteristics of the 

process that in the past made it difficult to address joint needs—such as 

systems interoperability: 

• The services and defense agencies continue to have control over 

resources for command, control, and communications systems critical 

to the GIG, a condition that has in the past fostered development of 

service-specific systems with limited interoperability. As a DOD-wide 

interoperability solution, however, the GIG represents a different type 

of development challenge that requires a more cooperative, joint 

investment approach than has been typical of DOD in the past. If those 

who are responsible and accountable for the success of the GIG do not 

 34 Stuart E. Johnson, “A New PPBS Process to Advance Transformation,” Defense 

Horizons, No. 32 (Sept. 2003). Defense Horizons is a publication of the National Defense 

University’s Center for Technology and National Security Policy. 

35 GAO, Future Years Defense Program: Actions Needed to Improve Transparency of 

DOD’s Projected Resource Needs, GAO-04-514 (Washington, D.C.: May 2004), 2. 

36 GAO, Information Technology: Improvements Needed in the Reliability of Defense 

Budget Submissions, GAO-04-115 (Washington, D.C.: December 2003), 2. 
Page 21 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

have control over resources, the department may continue to employ a 

stovepiped approach to investing in systems, and thus fail to 

fundamentally improve interoperability outcomes. 

• PPBE is still not sufficiently integrated with the requirements and 

acquisition processes. In addition, the requirements determination 

process is now structured in terms of capabilities, but the resource 

allocation process continues to be structured in terms of individual 

service and defense agency programs rather than capability areas (such 

as net-centricity). Also, the Major Force Programs established with the 

FYDP remain virtually unchanged and no longer adequately reflect the 

needs of current and future missions. 

• The PPBE process is still not flexible enough to quickly accommodate 

emerging technologies or requirements resulting from lessons learned. 

In recent years, some budgetary flexibility has been created through 

such mechanisms as the congressionally established Limited 

Acquisition Authority37 granted to U.S. Joint Forces Command to meet 

urgent, unanticipated warfighting needs. However, because there are 

no funds budgeted for this authority, the command has faced 

challenges in finding funding for projects. 

In response to GAO recommendations, DOD has issued a policy and taken 

initial steps toward implementing a portfolio-based management approach 

to investing in information technology systems. However, DOD was slow 

to formalize its policy, and it is too early to assess its effectiveness.38 DOD 

believes that managing its information technology investments by missionoriented portfolios39—a concept emphasized in the commercial sector—

will (1) ensure information technology investments support the 

department’s vision, mission, and goals; (2) ensure efficient and effective 

delivery of capabilities to the warfighter; and (3) maximize the return on 

DOD’s investment. However, the DOD directive establishing information 

 37 P.L. 108-136, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (Nov. 24, 2003). The 

Limited Acquisition Authority is intended to allow U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) to 

provide battle management, command and control, communications, and intelligence 

equipment, and any other equipment the JFCOM commander determines is necessary and 

appropriate to facilitate the use of joint forces in military operations or enhance the 

interoperability of equipment used by joint forces. 

38 DOD Directive 8115.01, Information Technology Portfolio Management (Oct. 10, 2005). 

39 DOD’s mission-oriented portfolios are Warfighting, Business, DOD portion of 

Intelligence, and Enterprise Information Environment. 
Page 22 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

technology portfolio management indicates that portfolio management 

processes must work within the bounds of DOD’s three major investment 

decision-making processes. Given this guidance and the limitations of the 

PPBE process, it is unclear whether portfolio managers would be 

sufficiently empowered to meaningfully influence DOD components’ 

information technology investments. 

DOD has taken various steps in recent years to improve acquisition 

outcomes and focus acquisition decision-making on developing joint, netcentric systems, but the Defense Acquisition System remains essentially 

structured to support investments in service-oriented systems. To 

effectively develop the GIG and enable net-centric capabilities, the 

acquisition process must ensure that programs critical to the GIG not only 

achieve desired cost, schedule, and performance objectives, but—because 

the programs are interdependent and must work together to deliver a 

capability—it must also ensure that their development is closely 

synchronized and managed. In addition, to be interoperable, systems must 

be developed from a joint perspective and aligned with the architecture, 

standards, and data strategies established for the GIG. Further, the 

acquisition process must be adaptive to keep pace with the rapid advances 

that have taken place with information technology in recent years. 

Although DOD produces the best weapons in the world, GAO has found 

that the department’s acquisition process has long been beset by problems 

that cause weapon systems to cost more, take longer to develop and field, 

and deliver less capability than originally envisioned.40 In recent years, we 

recommended that DOD adopt a knowledge-based approach to 

acquisitions that reduces risk by attaining high levels of knowledge in 

three elements of a new product—technology, design, and production—at 

key consecutive junctures in development.41

DOD has taken steps in recent years to address these issues. In May 2003, 

DOD issued a revised acquisition policy that incorporated knowledgebased and evolutionary acquisition principles employed by leading 

commercial companies, with the aim of fostering greater efficiency and 

flexibility and reducing risk in the development and acquisition of weapon 

 40 GAO, High Risk Series: An Update, GAO-05-207 (Washington, D.C.: January 2005). 

41 GAO, Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Major Weapon Programs, GAO-04-248 

(Washington, D.C.: March 2004). 

Acquisition Process Not 

Suited to Managing 

Interdependent Programs 
Page 23 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

systems. 42 The revised policy requires program managers to reduce risk by 

demonstrating attainment of essential knowledge at key program 

junctures and establishes as DOD’s preferred strategy developing systems 

incrementally, an approach in which the customer may not get the 

ultimate capability right away, but the product is available sooner and at a 

lower cost. However, we continue to see many programs move forward 

with a high degree of risk. For example, programs that are critical to the 

GIG, such as the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) and Transformational 

Satellite Communications System (TSAT), have progressed without 

sufficient knowledge that their technologies could work as intended.43

Consequently, these programs have faced cost, schedule, and performance 

issues that have complicated DOD’s efforts to deliver these key GIG 

components as originally planned.44

Under the Defense Acquisition System, programs that are intended to 

produce interdependent systems are too often managed independently 

rather than as a system of systems.45 With increased efforts to promote netcentric capabilities, key transformational systems under development 

depend on capabilities being provided by other acquisition programs. 

However, DOD program management and acquisition oversight tend to 

focus on individual programs and not necessarily on synchronizing 

multiple programs to deliver interdependent systems at the same time, as 

required to achieve the intended capability. This focus has affected some 

recent DOD efforts to develop such systems of systems. We recently 

reported, for example, that the Army’s effort to develop a high-capacity 

communications network for higher-level command units, a program 

called the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T), was at risk 

because critical capabilities to be provided by other programs—unmanned 

aerial vehicles—may not be available when needed (one platform was not 

 42 DOD Directive 5000.1, The Defense Acquisition System (May 12, 2003) describes the 

management principles for DOD’s acquisition programs. DOD Instruction 5000.2, Operation 

of the Defense Acquisition System (May 12, 2003), outlines a framework for managing 

acquisition programs. Collectively, these are known as the 5000 series. 

43 The JTRS and TSAT programs are or have recently been restructured and may be on a 

path toward a more evolutionary acquisition approach. 

44 GAO, Defense Acquisitions: Resolving Development Risks in the Army’s Networked 

Communications Capabilities Is Key to Fielding Future Force, GAO-05-669 (Washington, 

D.C.: June 2005), 3; GAO-04-248, 27. 

45 DOD defines a system of systems as a set or arrangement of interdependent systems that 

are related or connected to provide a given capability. The loss of any part of the system 

will significantly degrade the performance or capabilities of the whole. 
Page 24 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

adequately funded for a dedicated communications capability and the 

other was still in the concept development phase).46 In addition, the Army’s 

Future Combat Systems47 program is at risk because its development 

schedule is not consistent with the fielding schedules for the Joint Tactical 

Radio Systems, on which it is critically dependent. 

Although DOD has acknowledged the growing importance of 

interoperability and recognizes the corresponding need to improve joint 

coordination in acquisitions, the military services continue to develop and 

acquire systems that have limited interoperability with other systems on 

the battlefield. This condition persists in part because the military services 

have traditionally focused on developing and acquiring systems to meet 

their own specific missions and have placed relatively less emphasis on 

developing and acquiring the types of interoperable systems needed to 

meet the demands of joint operations.48 Consequently, systems have often 

been developed to perform service-specific tasks and to support vertical 

exchanges of information. Rather than being developed around integrated 

architectures49 and common standards, systems have been designed and 

developed using different standards and protocols, and operate in 

different portions of the radio-frequency spectrum. 

DOD has had policies in place for several years to improve systems 

interoperability, including the designation of interoperability as a key 

performance parameter for all systems that exchange information and 

required testing for interoperability, but recent military operations have 

shown that interoperability problems persist. Recently, DOD has 

introduced new initiatives to improve interoperability and focus on the 

need for joint, net-centric systems. For example, in 2003, DOD replaced 

the requirement for an interoperability key performance parameter with a 

 46 GAO-05-669, 28. 

47 The Future Combat System is a large and complex effort to develop a suite of new 

manned and unmanned ground and air vehicles, sensors, and munitions linked by a new 

information network. 

48 GAO, Military Operations: Recent Campaigns Benefited from Improved 

Communications and Technology, but Barriers to Continued Progress Remain, 

GAO-04-547 (Washington, D.C.: June 2004), 21-22. 

49 An architecture is the structure of components, their relationships, and the principles and 

guidelines governing their design and evolution over time. An integrated architecture 

consists of multiple views or perspectives (operational view, systems view, and technical 

standards view) that facilitates integration and promotes interoperability across 

capabilities and among related integrated architectures. 
Page 25 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

net-ready key performance parameter. Whereas the interoperability key 

performance parameter sought to ensure a system could exchange 

information directly with several other systems, the new net-ready key 

performance parameter requires a system to be able to exchange 

information with the “network.” In addition, DOD’s Chief Information 

Officer launched a net-centric program review effort in 2004, intended to 

improve the department’s focus on developing systems with net-centric 

attributes. While these efforts represent some commitment by DOD to 

improving the interoperability of the systems it develops and acquires, 

they may be of limited value unless interdependent programs are managed 

more effectively. 

One mechanism DOD has used for a relatively longer period of time to 

help address the systems interoperability problem is combining similar 

service requirements into joint-service development programs in an effort 

to ensure closer up-front coordination between services and to realize 

economic efficiencies. However, in practice the department has long 

struggled to achieve service buy-in, which is essential to joint acquisition 

success. For example, in 2003 we reported that the Joint Tactical Radio 

System program had difficulty getting the military services to agree on 

joint requirements and funding necessary to execute the program. We 

further found that the lack of joint-service cooperation on the program 

hampered production of necessary program documents such as the 

concept of operations and migration plans and that together these factors 

caused schedule delays. In the meantime, the Army made unplanned 

purchases of additional legacy radios to meet operational needs.50 We 

recommended that DOD strengthen the joint-program management 

structure by establishing centralized program funding, realigning the Joint 

Program Office under a different organizational arrangement, and placing 

the cluster development programs under the Joint Program Office. In the 

fiscal year 2004 National Defense Authorization Act,51 Congress directed 

DOD to take steps consistent with most of our recommendations. 

Similarly, DOD’s efforts to develop a Single Integrated Air Picture 

capability—whereby airborne tracking information from different sensor 

systems can be fused into a single picture—have also encountered joint 

management challenges. Although Joint Forces Command was given new 

oversight responsibilities in 2003 to promote stronger joint management of 

the Single Integrated Air Picture development effort, it has been difficult, 

 50 GAO-03-879R. 

51 P.L. 108-136 sec. 213 (Nov. 24, 2003). 
Page 26 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

according to officials from Joint Forces Command and the Single 

Integrated Air Picture program office, to resolve differences with the 

services regarding requirements and funding. 

While DOD’s acquisition policy now includes knowledge-based and 

evolutionary acquisition principles, the acquisition system operates too 

slowly and is too inflexible to keep pace with the rapid development of 

communications technologies essential to modern, interoperable 

command, control, and communications systems. For example, the 

National Research Council found in 1999 that the program management 

and oversight processes of the acquisition system operate on metrics 

optimized for weapon system acquisitions in which underlying 

technologies change more slowly than do the information technologies 

essential to modern command, control, and communications systems.52

The study concludes that metrics oriented to long acquisition cycles and 

full performance capability often do not allow for the timely integration of 

commercial technologies into command, control, and communications 

systems. More recently, in a 2002 study, DOD’s Joint C4ISR Decision 

Support Center concluded that technology for joint command and control 

capabilities progresses by a generation or more before the acquisition 

system can field them.53 The end result of these problems is that the 

acquisition system is not sufficiently responsive to warfighter needs for 

interoperable systems. DOD entities have developed short-term 

interoperability solutions (e.g., a communications network—the Joint 

Network Transport Capability54—deployed to Iraq in 2004) and invested 

supplemental appropriations in legacy (largely commercial off-the-shelf) 

command, control, and communications systems urgently needed on the 

battlefield (e.g., in fiscal year 2005, Congress appropriated $767 million in 

supplemental funds55 for the legacy SINCGARS56 radios). 

 52Realizing the Potential of C4I: Fundamental Challenges, 20 and 221. 

53 Joint Requirements Acquisition Study (July 15, 2002), 14. 

54 GAO-05-669, 29. 

55 See House Report 109-72 (May 3, 2005), 110. 

56 Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System. 
Page 27 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

DOD’s current approach to developing the GIG does not foster the level of 

coordination and cooperation needed to make the GIG a reality. DOD’s 

management approach for the GIG effort and the department’s decisionmaking processes contain fundamental structural impediments to success 

that recent changes to them have not been able to overcome. In fact, these 

vertically-oriented or “stovepiped” ways of doing business have helped 

perpetuate the very interoperability problem that the GIG is intended to 

overcome. We believe DOD will not be successful in “horizontal” or 

crosscutting initiatives such as the GIG unless it substantially changes its 

decentralized management approach and the service-centric, poorly 

integrated processes it uses to make investment decisions. The stakes are 

high. Management inefficiencies that were accepted as the cost of doing 

business in the past could jeopardize crosscutting efforts like the GIG 

because greater interdependencies among systems will mean that 

problems in individual development programs will ripple through to other 

programs, having a damaging effect on the overall effort. In addition, the 

likelihood of slowed growth and perhaps even reductions in DOD’s future 

budgets that may result from the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance will 

limit the department’s ability to mitigate the impact of these problems with 

additional budgetary resources. Without significant change in DOD’s 

management approach and processes, we believe the department will not 

be able to achieve the GIG as envisioned and may have to settle for a 

different, more expensive solution farther out in the future than planned. 

To better accommodate the crosscutting nature of the GIG development 

effort, we recommend DOD adopt a management approach that will 

ensure a joint perspective is taken. In doing so, DOD should 

(1) consolidate responsibility, authority, and control over 

resources—within the existing management structure or in a new 

entity—necessary to enforce investment decisions that cut across 

organizational lines and (2) hold the organization accountable for ensuring 

the objectives of the GIG are achieved. 

In written comments on a draft of this report, DOD concurred with our 

findings and recommendation (DOD’s letter is reprinted in app. II). In 

commenting on our recommendation, however, DOD noted that 

Department of Defense Directive 5144.1 (May 2, 2005) indicates that the 

DOD Chief Information Officer is responsible for integrating information 

and related activities and services across the department. While this 

directive is intended to help strengthen the department’s management of 

investments such as the GIG, we remain concerned that the responsibility, 

Conclusion 

Recommendations for 

Executive Action 

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation 
Page 28 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

authority, and accountability for developing the components of the GIG 

reside among many organizational entities across the department. DOD 

also noted in its comments that Department of Defense Directive 8115.01 

(October 10, 2005) establishes policy for managing information technology 

by portfolios and that this portfolio approach should provide a critical tool 

for improving integration across the department’s major decision support 

systems (JCIDS, PPBE, and the Defense Acquisition System). We agree 

that the concept of portfolio management holds promise; however, we are 

not confident that DOD will be able to effectively implement the policy 

unless it substantially changes its decision-making processes and ensures 

that portfolio managers are sufficiently empowered to influence DOD 

components’ information technology investment decisions. 

We are sending copies of this report to the Secretary of Defense; the 

Secretaries of the Air Force, Army, and Navy; the Assistant Secretary of 

Defense for Networks and Information Integration; the Under Secretary of 

Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics; the Under Secretary of 

Defense (Comptroller); the Director of the Defense Information Systems 

Agency; and interested congressional committees. We will provide copies 

to others on request. This report will also be available at no charge on 

GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov. 

If you have any questions about this report or need additional information, 

please call me at (202) 512-4841 (sullivanm@gao.gov). Contact points for 

our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on 

the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to 

this report are listed in appendix V. 

Michael J. Sullivan 

Director 

Acquisition and Sourcing Management 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 

Page 29 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

To assess the Department of Defense’s (DOD) management approach for 

the Global Information Grid (GIG) and the extent to which the 

department’s primary decision-making processes support the GIG, we 

collected and reviewed (1) related legislation, directives, instructions, and 

guidance; (2) DOD policies and guidance related to the GIG and networkcentric (or “net-centric”) governance; and (3) programmatic and technical 

documents pertaining to core GIG systems. We also conducted a review of 

relevant literature, analyzing studies on net-centric warfare, systems 

interoperability, and DOD management and investment decision making. 

We conducted this literature review by searching several types of 

databases using such search terms as Joint Capabilities Integration and 

Development System; Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution 

process; Defense Acquisition System; interoperability; jointness; 

requirements; defense budget; Global Information Grid; etc. The databases 

were: 

• the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) database, which 

collects thousands of research and development project summaries 

from defense organizations; 

• Policy File, which provides abstracts and full-text articles on public 

policy research and analysis from research organizations, think tanks, 

university research programs, and publishers; and 

• Dialog Defense Newsletters, which contains full-text newsletters on 

defense companies, products, markets, technologies, and legislation. 

We identified related analyses by searching online archives at GAO, 

individual think tanks such as RAND, and congressional agencies. We also 

individually searched online collections of various DOD organizations, 

including the Defense Science Board, the Office of Force Transformation, 

the Quadrennial Defense Review, and the Joint C4ISR Decision Support 

Center. We examined the selected documents to identify the positions 

taken within them regarding the nature and causes of problems related to 

interoperability, jointness, and DOD’s decision-making processes. We 

placed these results in a series of matrices to identify commonalities in the 

literature—such as concerns about organizational structure and the lack 

of integration among the three decision-making processes—and we used 

this synthesis to develop and support our findings. 

In addition, we conducted interviews with and received briefings from 

officials with a number of DOD organizations (including the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense; the Joint Staff; and the three military services—the 

Departments of the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy) that have 

responsibility for achieving the GIG. We also interviewed several subject 

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 

Page 30 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

matter experts (from academic, think tank, or consulting organizations) 

who have senior-level DOD experience or who have recently written on 

the operation of DOD and its key decision-making processes. 

We conducted our work from December 2004 through January 2006 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Defense 

Page 31 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Defense 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Defense 

Page 32 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 
Appendix III: Five Major Acquisitions Related 

to the Core GIG Network and Information 

Capability 

Page 33 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

Program or initiative Purpose Manager 

Transformational Satellite (TSAT) To develop satellites to serve as the cornerstone of a new 

DOD communications infrastructure and provide high 

bandwidth connectivity to the warfighter. Some of the 

technologies that TSAT plans to use are laser cross-links, 

space-based data processing and Internet routing 

systems, and highly agile multibeam/phased array 

antennas. 

Air Force 

Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) To develop family of software-defined radios to 

interoperate with different types of existing radios and 

significantly increase voice, data, and video 

communications capabilities. 

Joint service program responsible 

for the software communications 

architecture and waveforms; military 

service-led programs responsible for 

developing radios 

Global Information Grid-Bandwidth 

Expansion (GIG-BE) 

To provide additional bandwidth and information access at 

key military installations within the United States and 

overseas via a combination of acquiring bandwidth from 

commercial providers as well as extending fiber optic 

networks to bases and installations that are located away 

from commercial networks. 

Defense Information Systems 

Agency 

Network Centric Enterprise 

Services (NCES) 

To enable network users to identify, access, send, store, 

and protect information. Also to enable DOD to monitor 

and manage network performance and problems. Is 

expected to require development of new capabilities and 

tools for tagging data so it is useful, providing users with 

capability to identify relevant information based on content 

and allowing users to freely exchange and collaborate on 

information. 

Defense Information Systems 

Agency 

Cryptography Transformation 

Initiative 

To enable DOD to protect the network and sensitive 

information. To provide information assurance and 

encryption support, including cryptography equipment 

(e.g., Internet protocol encryptors), firewalls, intrusion 

detection systems, etc. 

National Security Agency, Defense 

Information Systems Agency, and 

the military services 

Source: DOD (data); GAO (analysis and presentation). 

Appendix III: Five Major Acquisitions Related 

to the Core GIG Network and Information 

Capability 
Appendix IV: Joint Family of Concepts 

Page 34 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

In descending order, the joint family of concepts consists of the following: 

The overarching concept of the joint family of concepts. It broadly 

describes how the joint force is expected to operate in the mid- to farterm, reflects enduring national interests derived from strategic guidance, 

and identifies the key characteristics of the future joint force. 

Describe how a Joint Force Commander will accomplish a strategic 

mission through the conduct of operational-level military operations 

within a campaign. 

Describe how the future joint force will perform a particular military 

function across the full range of military operations. 

Distill JOC- and JFC-derived capabilities into the fundamental tasks, 

conditions, and standards of how a joint force commander will integrate 

capabilities to generate effects and achieve an objective in 10 to 20 years. 

Appendix IV: Joint Family of Concepts 

Capstone Concept for Joint 

Operations 

Joint Operating Concepts 

(JOC) 

Joint Functional Concepts 

(JFC) 

Joint Integrating Concepts 
Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

Page 35 GAO-06-211 GIG Investment 

Michael J. Sullivan, (937) 258-7915 

In addition to the contact named above, staff making key contributions to 

this report were John Oppenheim, Assistant Director; Marie Ahearn; Lily 

Chin; Joel Christenson; Lauren M. Jones; Ron Schwenn; Jay Tallon; Hai 

Tran; and Susan Woodward. 

Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

GAO Contact 

Acknowledgments 

(120383) 
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