The Air Force is standing behind its troubled Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System (DEAMS), a service spokeswoman said, despite its original cost estimate reportedly quintupling to over $2 billion.
When asked if the Air Force identified a “drop dead” date for DEAMS to shut down the program if doesn’t make satisfactory progress, Air Force spokeswoman Tonya Racasner said Wednesday in an email the service remains committed on meeting financial management requirements for the Air Force, U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS).
Racasner said the Air Force has full confidence the recent improvements to the DEAMS system, and training, will help the Air Force meet those goals.
“Progress is being made against known deficiencies and the DEAMS program, and functional management offices, have aligned resources to continue executing corrective actions to support the acquisition strategy for full accounting capability,” Racasner said.
DEAMS is a Major Automated Information System that uses commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to provide accounting and management services. DOT&E said TRANSCOM and Air Force financial managers will use DEAMS to compile and share financial management data and information across TRANSCOM and the USAF.
In its fiscal 2012 annual report to Congress, the Defense Department’s director, operational test & evaluation (DOT&E) office said DEAMS, in addition to its $2 billion overrun, is 7.5 years behind schedule. Accenture [ACN] is the contractor for DEAMS (Defense Daily, Jan. 23).
DOT&E said DEAMS could already be the target of fraud or theft due to inconsistent telecommuting policies, information assurance (IA) vulnerabilities, inadequate control of budget targets and large account imbalances. Racasner said the Air Force has addressed “all concerns” raised in the DOT&E assessment through corrective actions to the system, training and process controls, though she did not specify which corrective actions the Air Force took place. Racasner said initial assessments show these are working and the system supports “good controls and accounting.”
Recasner said the Air Force is committed to achieving audit readiness of the Statement of Budgetary Resources (SBR) by 2014 and full financial auditability by Sept. 30, 2017. DOT&E said DEAMS was neither making sufficient progress toward achieving audit readiness of the SBR by the end of 2014, nor toward achieving full financial auditability by the statutory 2017 deadline. Recasner said DEAMS will play a role in achieving auditability for both of these milestones, and into the future, in a way that is sustainable.
The Air Force corrected or mitigated, through system or process controls, all of the information assurance (IA) vulnerabilities identified in the DOT&E report, Racasner said. DOT&E said in its report three of seven previously-identified major IA vulnerabilities still required correction. IA is the practice of assuring information and managing related to the use, processing, storage and transmission of information or data and the systems and processes used for those purposes.
DEAMS is not the first Air Force ERP software endeavor to break the bank. The service in 2012 canceled its Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS), an effort to globally view, standardize and manage logistics resources to help close process gaps and use ERP software to more efficiently manage logistics like end items, materiel and people. The Air Force canceled ECSS after spending $1 billion on the program without apparently producing any significant military capability (Defense Daily, Dec. 11).