BLM’s mission is to manage public lands and resources to best serve the needs of the American people. The Bureau, which is part of the Department of the Interior (DOI), has 210 state, district, and resource area offices that manage about 270 million acres of public lands located in 28 states, primarily in the West and Alaska (see figure 1). BLM’s offices also manage another 300 million acres of subsurface mineral resources that underlie lands administered by other government agencies or are owned by private interests. BLM’s fiscal year 1995 appropriation totaled $1.24 billion. In fulfilling its mission, BLM develops land-use plans to balance multiple uses and competing demands, including ecosystem management, timber harvesting, mining, oil and gas production, watershed management, wildlife management, and recreation. It also designates and maintains land of critical environmental concern and is responsible for a major section of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. In performing these functions, BLM maintains over 1 billion documents, including land surveys and surveyor notes, tract books, land patents, mining claims, oil and gas leases, and land and mineral case files. According to BLM, many of these paper documents are deteriorating, and some are illegible. Most of the documents are manually maintained and stored in a number of locations, although some have been entered into various databases since the 1970s. During the early 1980s, BLM found it could not handle the case processing workload associated with a peak in the number of applications for oil and gas leases. BLM recognized that to keep up with the increased demand it needed to automate its manual records and case processing activities. Thus, the Bureau began planning to acquire an automated land and mineral case processing system (ALMRS). At that time, BLM estimated the life-cycle cost of such a case processing system would be about $240 million. In 1988, BLM expanded the scope of ALMRS to include a land information system (LIS). This system was to provide automated information systems and geographic information systems technology (GIS) support for other land management functions, such as land use and resource planning. BLM then combined the LIS with a project to modernize the Bureau’s computer and telecommunications equipment. BLM estimated the total life-cycle cost of this combined project to be $880 million. According to DOI and ALMRS project officials, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed BLM to scale down the combined project in 1989 because of the projected high cost. The project, which was renamed ALMRS/Modernization, was reduced to three major components—the ALMRS Initial Operating Capability (ALMRS IOC), Geographic Coordinate Data Base (GCDB), and modernization of BLM’s computer and telecommunications infrastructure and rehost of selected management and administrative systems. Estimated life-cycle costs were cut to $575 million. In 1993, BLM reduced the ALMRS/Modernization 10-year life-cycle cost estimate from $575 million to $403 million, after the system development and deployment contract was awarded at a lower cost than had been anticipated. BLM has designated the ALMRS/Modernization project as a mission-critical system to (1) automate land and mineral records and case processing activities and (2) provide information to support land and resource management activities. The project is a large-scale effort that is expected to provide an efficient means to record, maintain, and retrieve land description, ownership, and use information to support BLM, other federal programs, and interested parties. It is to accomplish this by (1) establishing a common information technology platform,(2) increasing public access to BLM records through the Internet, (3) integrating multiple databases into a single geographically referenced database, (4) shortening the time to complete case processing activities, and (5) replacing costly manual records with automated records. Appendix II provides an overview of the planned ALMRS/Modernization architecture. As noted above, the ALMRS/Modernization consists of three components—ALMRS IOC, GCDB, and technology modernization and rehost of selected systems. The ALMRS IOC component is to provide (1) support for case processing activities, including recording valid mining claims, processing mineral patents, and granting rights-of-way for roads and power corridors and (2) information for land and resource management activities, including timber sales and grazing leases. The GCDB component is the database that will contain geographic coordinates and survey information for land parcels. Other databases, such as those containing land and mineral records, will be integrated with GCDB. The information technology modernization and rehost component consists of installing computer and telecommunications equipment and converting selected management and administrative systems to a relational database system that will be used throughout the Bureau. Between fiscal years 1983 and 1995, about $296.2 million had been appropriated for ALMRS/Modernization. According to project officials, obligations for ALMRS/Modernization totaled $262.8 million from 1983 through April 30, 1995. They expect obligations to equal appropriations by September 30, 1995. In 1993, OMB and BLM agreed to annual funding limits for ALMRS/Modernization through fiscal year 2002. As agreed, total spending was not to exceed $403 million for fiscal years 1983 through 2002. However, to stay within the limit for fiscal year 1995, BLM delayed the initial hardware installation for the Alaska and Wyoming state, district, and resource area offices. Also, BLM estimates that it will exceed the fiscal year 1996 limit of $69.5 million by $25.2 million. BLM expects to obtain the $25.2 million from other parts of its operations. According to ALMRS/Modernization project officials, the increase is attributable to several factors, but primarily because of requirements that were added after contract award. These requirements include system engineering studies for system architecture and system security issues, a requirement to integrate BLM’s remaining older personal computers and local area networks with the new ALMRS/Modernization systems, changes to more easily accommodate land record automation requirements of other Interior bureaus and federal agencies, and more training for users and technical staff. In addition, the ALMRS/Modernization project office now believes that operations and maintenance costs in fiscal years 1997 through 2002 will be more than the OMB and BLM funding agreement for that category. BLM is currently working on a new operations and maintenance estimate. BLM has completed most of the initial installation of computer and telecommunications equipment and has met most of its ALMRS IOC, GCDB, and rehost milestones thus far. As the ALMRS IOC development nears completion over the next several months, tasks will become more complex as the system is integrated and tested. BLM has taken action to maintain its tight development schedule, but slippages could still occur because there is little schedule time available to correct unanticipated problems. Also, BLM has recently taken action to obtain an independent assessment of the ALMRS IOC to help ensure that its requirements are met. BLM has been meeting most of its schedule milestones for the initial installation of ALMRS IOC and modernization computer and telecommunications hardware. Thus far, BLM has installed (1) a mix of ALMRS IOC, office automation, E-mail, GIS servers, and telecommunications equipment primarily in eight state offices and their subordinate district and resource area offices and (2) about 4,400 of the planned 6,073 workstations in these offices. The Bureau plans to install 730 more workstations and other equipment in fiscal year 1995 at the Idaho and Utah state offices, their subordinate offices, and a support office. However, initial hardware installation for Alaska and Wyoming state and subordinate offices has been delayed because of a shortage of hardware funds in fiscal year 1995, according to ALMRS/Modernization project officials. BLM recently rescheduled the installation of servers and 951 workstations for these locations to fiscal year 1996. The collection and validation of land and mineral data for ALMRS IOC are on schedule for all ten state offices. The land and mineral data files are to be converted to INFORMIX after the installation and testing of final hardware upgrades and ALMRS IOC software. The development of ALMRS IOC software, which BLM divided into three phases or “builds,” is currently on schedule. Build 1, which consists of about 46,000 lines of code, was developed and successfully tested on time. BLM and the prime contractor have been working on about 124,000 lines of code for build 2. They expect to complete the software integration test for build 2 on September 12, 1995. BLM and the prime contractor estimate that about 120,000 lines of code will be developed in build 3 to complete the ALMRS IOC software. The software produced in builds 1, 2, and 3 will be integrated to form ALMRS IOC. As to the GCDB component, nine state offices are meeting or are ahead of the data collection milestones set in 1993. One state office, Montana, is behind schedule. The final test of the software to convert existing data files to INFORMIX is scheduled to be completed by January 12, 1996. BLM plans to convert the GCDB data files when ALMRS IOC is deployed in each state office. Finally, the administrative systems rehost effort is on schedule with all 13 of the planned software applications and related databases converted from COBOL to INFORMIX. Three of these applications have been rehosted to the ALMRS/ Modernization equipment and are operational, one is in the process of being rehosted, six have been tested and accepted and will be rehosted, and three have undergone testing and are expected to be accepted soon.