Even after several years of defense downsizing, DOD operates hundreds of major military bases and many smaller facilities in the United States. These bases can range in size from less than 10 acres to several hundred thousand acres. There are bases, such as Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base located in North Carolina, adjacent to each other; and there are bases, while not adjacent, that are located within a relatively short distance from each other. Base supporting services vary and can include property maintenance, logistics, transportation and equipment maintenance, personnel and professional support, and services to individuals, such as food, housing, recreation, or education. Appendix I provides a more detailed list of common base support functions. Our analysis of the services’ operations and maintenance (O&M) budgets indicate that a significant portion of these budgets are spent on maintaining facilities and delivering services to installations. DOD has long been concerned about and has sought ways to reduce the cost of military base support, and DOD believes that greater economies and savings could be achieved by consolidating and eliminating duplicate support services for military bases located close to one another, or where similar functions are performed at multiple locations. Over the years, DOD’s concerns have led to some large consolidation efforts, such as in the areas of logistics and commissary services, as well as more recent consolidations involving printing and finance. DOD has also supported efforts to foster greater cooperation and interservicing among the services on regional and local levels. However, two of the most notable interservicing type efforts initiated in the 1970s and 1980s were not successful, for reasons that appeared to have more to do with how they were implemented than with the merits of the concept. They involved consolidating real property management and contracting activities at Air Force and Army bases in the San Antonio, Texas, area and consolidating management of housing for each of the services in Oahu, Hawaii. (See app. II for additional information regarding these two consolidation efforts and circumstances contributing to their lack of success.) Meanwhile, on an installation and regional basis, the services have continued varying efforts, on a more limited basis, to develop interservice support agreements where possible. Downsizing and reduced defense budgets in recent years are now causing the services to take a renewed interest in trying to achieve greater economies, efficiencies, and cost savings in base operations. This includes efforts to more vigorously examine the potential for greater inter and intraservicing involving base support, as well as partnership arrangements between military bases and local governments and communities. At the same time, DOD is advocating greater reliance on outsourcing (contracting out) base support functions. Numerous studies completed by DOD and the services have supported the potential to save money in personnel, facilities, and operating costs by consolidating various base support functions through interservicing. However, the amount of these savings are not clear because some consolidations on which some projected savings were based were either not implemented, not implemented as planned, or terminated. These include the San Antonio Real Property Maintenance Agency and Contracting Center and the Oahu, Hawaii, housing programs. Both programs, operational for several years, were disestablished after encountering various problems and concerns on the part of affected military commanders about their effectiveness. DOD and the services have found it manpower intensive and often difficult to track savings from interservicing agreements and difficult to differentiate savings from cost avoidances; consequently, DOD does not devote significant efforts to tracking savings from projects that are implemented. However, DOD officials provided us with some ad hoc examples of multimillion dollar savings spread over varying periods of years involving such support functions as contracting, printing, training, recycling, teleconferencing, personnel services, and others. For example, service officials in Charleston, South Carolina, reported a 1-year cost avoidance of over $1 million in travel and per diem costs through shared use of video teleconferencing capabilities. In another example, service officials in Colorado Springs, Colorado, reported that a consolidated regional natural gas contract resulted in cost savings of $9.5 million over a 3-year period. In addition, potential savings today are clouded because the services are increasingly looking for ways to consolidate and streamline operations because of budget reductions. Service officials stated that they were reluctant to identify further savings as part of new studies, fearing additional reductions would be taken on top of the cuts that have already been made. In 1972, DOD established the Defense Regional Interservice Support program as its principal program to help identify and eliminate duplicative base support services for activities in close proximity to each other. The regulation governing the program, DOD Instruction 4000.19, required DOD activities to first consider using other DOD and federal activity capabilities unless a commercial source or developing an in-house capability constituted a better value. DOD reinforced its emphasis on interservicing and support consolidations in 1978 by establishing Joint Interservice Resource Study Groups (JIRSG). These regional groups were expected to evaluate the feasibility of savings through support service consolidations in geographic areas where there were several relatively large military installations within a 50-mile radius. DOD and service officials told us that between 1978 and 1992, JIRSGs conducted a variety of studies that identified potential savings and efficiencies through interservicing. However, we were told that many of these studies were ignored because no one, including local base commanders, really wanted to implement them. In April 1992, DOD revised the JIRSG program so that its focus shifted from conducting regional studies to providing interservice support. The JIRSG program ceased being mandatory and was no longer required to review defined support service categories as before. As a result of these changes, JIRSGs are now tasked with facilitating communications among DOD and other federal activities, sharing innovative ideas, and seeking opportunities for improving mission quality, efficiency, and effectiveness through the use of support agreements and other cooperative efforts. Although participation in the JIRSG program remains voluntary, OSD officials continue to emphasize the program through such means as conducting national workshops for JIRSG representatives and disseminating JIRSG newsletters, including information on successful agreements and partnerships. As of November 1995, there were 55 JIRSG regions throughout the United States, Europe, the Pacific, and Panama. We contacted JIRSG officials from 21 of these regions and found that about 29 percent of these regions had been inactive for the past several years, and many program offices did not have personnel in key positions. We were told that the existence, effectiveness, and success of a JIRSG program was often dependent on the interest of both the local commander and the JIRSG program manager, if there was one. Further, we were told that command interest in the programs ebbed and flowed with changes in commanders and their differing perspectives on the desirability of the program. Despite fluctuations in program emphasis, we found a range of interservicing agreements in place at the seven bases we visited. They included agreements pertaining to such support areas as morale, welfare, and recreation activities; laundry services; and utilities. Most could be characterized as limited arrangements, pertaining to portions of functions, such as a consolidated contract, rather than large-scale reliance of one military base on another for support, such as for overall contract administration. While many agreements were in place, OSD and service officials stated that many interservicing opportunities remain. We saw this at various collocated bases we visited. For example, both Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base maintain separate airfield operations facilities, and airfield operations was an area cited by Fort Lewis personnel as having the potential for one facility to serve both bases. Likewise, both Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base maintained separate contract administration, supply and engineering, and other support areas, that an Army official suggested had the potential for one service to provide to both bases. Appendix III provides a more detailed list of base support functions being performed at bases we visited where base personnel cited at least portions of those functions having the potential for consolidation and interservicing. Defense downsizing and resource constraints in recent years have reinforced the need to look for greater efficiencies and savings in base support operations. A major initiative now being spearheaded by OSD involves examining the potential for contracting out base support services. Also, underway under service auspices, and initiated prior to OSD’s current emphasis on contracting out, are a variety of initiatives ranging from a greater emphasis on interservicing to broad regionalization of selected support functions, to privatization of some functions, and contracting out. These service initiatives go beyond traditional interservicing with other DOD and federal agencies, including forming partnerships with local governments and communities. The relationship of these efforts to OSD’s current contracting out initiative raises questions as to whether DOD’s strategy and approaches to reducing costs in these areas are likely to achieve the maximum possible savings. Although DOD has historically placed some emphasis on contracting out, that emphasis today is greater than ever before due to the administration’s Reinventing Government Initiative, otherwise known as the National Performance Review, and to recommendations of two recent DOD study groups—the May 1995 Roles and Missions study, and the October 1995 Defense Science Board study on Quality of Life. Further, a provision in the fiscal year 1996 Defense authorization legislation encourages DOD to look to the private sector to meet its support needs. The 1993 report of the National Performance Review noted that every federal agency needs support services. The report advocated greater consideration of options in obtaining those services and said that no agency should provide support services in-house unless those services could compete with those of other agencies and private companies. That report has resulted in a greater emphasis being given to contracting out and privatizing support services. The 1995 report of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff dealing with Roles and Missions recommended that essentially all commercial activities in DOD be outsourced and that all new needs be channeled to the private sector from the beginning. That recommendation followed the study group’s review of the full spectrum of central support activities, including installations and facilities.