Michael Peck,
July 20, 2015
The Pentagon's procurement of commercial satellite bandwidth "is fragmented and inefficient," according to a new Government Accountability Office audit.
Department of Defense rules require that all commercial satellite communications services go through the Defense Information Systems Agency. However. the Pentagon's own most recent SATCOM usage report estimates that a third of the department's commercial SATCOM is bought independently by DoD components.
DoD has found the average cost of commercial SATCOM bought through DISA is about 16 percent lower than independently bought commercial SATCOM, GAO auditors discovered. The existing fragmentation limits the department's opportunities to bundle purchases, share services, and streamline its procurement of commercial SATCOM, GAO concluded.
Flaws also marred two recent Pentagon studies to determine the optimum mix of future military and commercial bandwidth. The 2014 Satellite Communications Strategy Report did not actually identity the appropriate mix, and "the 2014 Mix of Media Report based its predictions of future SATCOM requirements and demand on DoD's SATCOM Database, which DoD officials acknowledge lacks comprehensive usage and demand data."
The Pentagon's own plans to fix this are hampered by "lack of knowledge of what DoD is spending on commercial SATCOM and resistance to centralized management of SATCOM procurement," GAO said.
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