DOD acquisition policy defines an acquisition program as a directed, funded effort that provides a new, improved, or continuing materiel, weapon, or information system, or a service capability in response to an As shown in table 1, defense acquisition programs are approved need.classified into acquisition categories that depend on the value and type of acquisition. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and SOCOM also have supplemental acquisition policies that address certain aspects of acquisition program categorization and management. ACAT II and III programs encompass a wide range of efforts and program sizes. Programs may range from an ACAT II program with a total acquisition cost of more than $3 billion to an ACAT III program with an acquisition cost in the millions of dollars or lower. DOD’s acquisition policy does not establish a minimum cost for ACAT III programs. The level of oversight for acquisition programs varies based on the assigned ACAT level. DOD and component acquisition policies specify the organizational level of the milestone decision authority—the designated individual with overall responsibility for a program—for each ACAT level. The organizational level at which program requirements and requirements changes are approved may vary by ACAT level as well. The organizational level of the milestone decision authority for Air Force ACAT I-III programs is shown in figure 1 as an example. All acquisition programs are required by statute or DOD guidance to provide program information at milestones and other decision points, although these requirements differ by ACAT level. MDAP and MAIS programs, also known as ACAT I and IA programs, require more documentation and analysis to support program decisions and have to regularly report to Congress on their cost, schedule, and technical performance. These programs are required to enter and maintain program cost, schedule, and performance data and create APBs within DOD’s Defense Acquisition Management Information Retrieval (DAMIR) system, a web-based data system intended to provide data transparency of acquisition management information across DOD. Components may use DAMIR for other programs, but it is not required. Appendix II provides additional detail on acquisition documentation requirements and congressional reporting requirements by ACAT level. DOD components could not provide sufficiently reliable data for us to accurately determine the number, total cost, or performance of DOD’s current ACAT II and III programs. We found that the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of DOD’s data was undermined by (1) widespread data entry issues and missing data, and (2) inconsistent identification of current ACAT II and III programs across and within components. DOD components have taken some steps to improve ACAT II and III program data, but their efforts do not fully address the causes of the problems we identified. In addition to data reliability problems, DOD lacks consistent cost and schedule metrics across components to assess ACAT II and III program performance. Further, the lack of baseline cost and schedule data and comparable schedule milestones prevents DOD from consistently measuring the performance of ACAT II and III programs. Taken together, these issues limit the utility of DOD’s data on ACAT II and III programs for oversight, decision-making, and reporting purposes. We identified data reliability issues related to accuracy, completeness, or consistency with data for about 60 percent of ACAT II and III programs reported to us by DOD components. These issues prevented us from accurately determining the number, total cost, or performance of DOD’s current ACAT II and III programs. According to DOD acquisition policy, complete and current program information is essential to the acquisition process. Internal control standards for federal executive branch agencies also emphasize that agencies should have relevant, reliable, and timely information for decision-making and external reporting purposes. We found obvious accuracy and completeness issues in program cost data for ACAT II and III programs reported to us by DOD components. We also observed consistency issues in program data across components and within some components that affected the comparability of the data. Inaccurate data were evident across all of the components; issues we observed included reported dollar values outside the range of ACAT II and III programs and basic math errors. Inaccuracies like these suggest overall data quality problems. Further, when we reviewed a sample of programs and compared reported cost estimates to source documents, we found that cost estimate data was often misreported. Components incorrectly reported data or data was missing for 64 out of 95 programs for which we had complete source documents in our non-generalizable sample. We also observed missing data elements to varying degrees at all of the components except CBDP. For example, 333 out of 836 programs reported by the components were missing one or more cost estimate elements or basic information such as the ACAT level. Lastly, in numerous instances components did not follow the instructions of the data collection instrument, which also affected our ability to use the data. See table 2 for examples of the reliability issues we identified. In some instances, the accuracy and completeness issues we identified were consistent with known limitations of information in component systems. For example, Army acquisition officials told us that in the past there has been conflicting guidance about whether completed programs should be deleted from the Army’s acquisition information system, and some completed programs were never removed from the system. Officials at all components, except CBDP, further told us that accuracy of data in their systems relies primarily on the quality of information submitted by the Program Executive Officer (PEO) or program offices.Army, Navy, and Air Force acquisition officials told us that they work with PEOs to address data quality problems, such as by conducting ad hoc checks to flag obvious errors or missing data elements and following up with PEOs as necessary. SOCOM acquisition officials told us the Acquisition Executive emphasizes the importance of maintaining up-to- date data to program managers. Based on the data provided to us by DOD components, these existing data quality practices are insufficient to ensure the accuracy and completeness of data on DOD’s ACAT II and III programs as required by DOD policy and federal internal control standards. Data provided in response to our request for information on current ACAT II and III programs (1) included acquisitions that were not “current” ACAT II and III programs in accordance with our definition, (2) likely reflected inconsistent reporting of acquisitions at lower dollar levels across components, and (3) likely excluded certain acquisitions considered current ACAT II and III programs in accordance with certain component acquisition policies. For the purposes of our report, we define a current program as one that has been formally initiated in the acquisition process, but has not yet delivered 90 percent of its items or made 90 percent of planned expenditures. This definition is consistent with statutory reporting thresholds used by Congress in its reporting requirements for current MDAP programs. Inconsistent interpretations of what constitutes a current program and the inability of some components to reliably identify these programs contributed to the inclusion of programs that were not current in the data that components reported to us. DOD acquisition policy and component guidance generally do not define which ACAT II or III programs are considered to be current for management and reporting purposes. For example, DOD acquisition policy defines when a program is formally initiated and its operations and support phase begins, but it does not identify when a program should be considered current. Further, some components told us PEOs may have different interpretations of what constitutes a current program. Components also told us that they could not consistently use the information in their data systems to readily identify current programs. Of the 836 programs initially reported by the five components, we identified 199 programs across the Army, Navy, Air Force, and SOCOM that should not have been included because they did not meet our criteria for current programs. For example, according to an Army PEO, 90 of 140 programs originally reported to us as current ACAT II or III programs by the Army were not current based on our definition because these programs had delivered more than 90 percent of planned items or expended more than 90 percent of planned funds. Without the consistent identification of current ACAT II and III programs, DOD and component officials do not know the accurate number of these programs and may miss opportunities to identify programs that may need more or less oversight depending on whether or not most of the anticipated acquisition funding has been spent. Additionally, component guidance for defining acquisition programs varies and likely resulted in inconsistent reporting across components of acquisitions at lower dollar values. DOD acquisition policy establishes a cost ceiling and cost floor for ACAT II programs and a cost ceiling, but no cost floor, for ACAT III programs. However, some components have supplemental guidance that establishes additional acquisition categories or exclusions. For example, SOCOM and Navy have guidance that provides for certain acquisitions with less than $10 million in total RDT&E contracts, less than $25 million per year in annual procurement funding, and less than $50 million total in procurement contracts to be categorized as non-ACAT programs. Specifically, SOCOM designates these low cost, schedule, and technical risk efforts to field special operations-peculiar capabilities as abbreviated acquisition projects. Similarly, the Navy designates lower dollar value programs that do not require operational testing and evaluation as abbreviated acquisition programs.Air Force policies do not provide for lower dollar threshold categories Army and beneath the ACAT III level. According to officials from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, acquisition programs at these dollar levels should be reported as ACAT III programs. However, Navy and SOCOM did not include their non-ACAT programs in the ACAT II and III program data reported to us. There was also variation within components as to how acquisition programs were categorized. Army and Air Force acquisition officials told us that some programs that should have been considered ACAT II or III programs in accordance with component acquisition policy were not. These officials also told us that PEOs may have counted and handled programs differently in the absence of a clear definition of what should be considered a program of record.