Issues With Access to Acquisition Data and Information in the Department of Defense: Doing Data Right in Weapon System Acquisition

Abstract

Acquisition data lay the foundational role for decision-making, management, and oversight of the weapon-systems acquisition portfolio for the Department of Defense. How to effectively and efficiently spend these dollars has been a top priority for the Better Buying Power initiatives led by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. The OSD asked RAND to help identify how available data can help assist defense-acquisition decision-making. In particular, we documented factual information on 21 information systems that contain acquisition data. This builds on our earlier work (Riposo et al., 2015, Issues With Access to Acquisition Data and Information in the Department of Defense: Policy and Practice, RAND RR-880; and McKernan et al., 2016, Issues With Access to Acquisition Data and Information in the Department of Defense: A Closer Look at the Origins and Implementation of Controlled Unclassified Information Labels and Security Policy, RAND RR-1476) by exploring in more detail the data that support decision-making.