GAO report on DoD mission-critical spending

GAO report on DoD mission-critical spending

[Gregory Aharonian]

 
    The GAO monthly publishes reports about its analyses of the operations of
the rest of the government.  Many involve DOD operations, especially software
and hardware development.  What follows are abstracts to reports issued in
the past few months. Single copies of the report are available for free from:
 
U.S. General Accounting Office
P.O. Box 6015
Gaithersburg, MD  20877
 
Cite the report number and title, and they will send you a copy.
______________________________________________________________________________
 
                           MISSION CRITICAL SYSTEMS:
           DEFENSE ATTEMPTING TO ADDRESS MAJOR SOFTWARE CHALLENGES
 
              GAO/IMTEC-93-13
 
         ABSTRACT
 
     Billions of dollars in current and future Defense Department (DoD)
weapons and command, control, communications, and intelligence systems depend
on high-performance, correctly functioning, real-time computer systems that
hold up under severe stresses.  Yet the Pentagon's mission-critical systems
continue to be plagued by a host of long-standing software development
problems, including cost, schedule and performance shortfalls.  This report
provides an overview of earlier GAO work on mission-critical systems.  Many
studies both by the GAO and DoD have pointed out a variety of deficiencies,
ranging from a lack of management attention to ill-defined system requirements
to inadequate testing.  Why has this situation persisted so long?  GAO notes
that the understanding of software as a product and of software development as
a process is not keeping pace with the growing complexity of existing and
emerging mission-critical systems.  The Pentagon is trying to overcome this
dilemma through two main programs - the software action plan working group
and the Corporate Information Management initiative.  Whether these efforts
will solve the military's formidable software problems is uncertain; there
are no easy answers.
-- 
**************************************************************************
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

Re: GAO report on DoD mission-critical spending

[Mark Shanks]

Mr. Aharonian provides an abstract of a GAO report on DoD mission critical
software systems, edits below:

>...the Pentagon's mission-critical systems continue to be plagued by
> a host of long-standing software development problems, including cost,
> schedule and performance shortfalls.
> Many studies both by the GAO and DoD have pointed out a variety of 
> deficiencies, ranging from a lack of management attention to ill-defined
> system requirements to inadequate testing.  
> Why has this situation persisted so long?  GAO notes that the understanding
> of software as a product and of software development as a process is not
> keeping pace with the growing complexity of existing and emerging mission-
> critical systems. The Pentagon is trying to overcome this dilemma through 
> two main programs - the software action plan working group and the 
> Corporate Information Management initiative. Whether these efforts will
> solve the military's formidable software problems is uncertain;
> there are no easy answers.

Given Mr. Aharonian's propensity for blistering attacks on "mandated"
Ada, the DoD, and each of the services, I am unsure of the spin placed
on this abstract or his motivation in posting it. However, having spent
10 years in the Air Force and 9 years at McDonnell in St. Louis, I
feel qualified to offer my opinions on the subject.

Having the Pentagon involved in solving software development process
problems is about as helpful as having Leatherface help you trim your
fingernails. Particularly specious is the line about "the understanding
of software as a product and of software development as a process is not
keeping pace with the growing complexity of existing and emerging mission-
critical systems"; I might change that to read, "the Pentagon's
misconception that requirements can be changed, added or deleted with
no concern towards schedule impact or software quality is exceeded only
by their belief that funding can be cut or even dropped, sometimes for
years at a time, without affecting the program's existence or the
contractor's ability to stay in the business." In an environment
where the existence of a given program is at the whim of not only
Congress in general but assorted political hacks, both civilian AND
military, it is hardly surprising that there are amazing cost and
schedule overruns and/or performance shortfalls. These problems, though,
will not be responsive to "working groups" and "initiatives"; I have
seen PLENTY of these, and their primary aim is to perpetuate themselves.
In time, some even issue forth volumes of platitudinous bull-hockey,
which are either (soundly) ignored or (unfortunately more frequently)
are used to flog the (innocent) engineers until the next round is issued
(typically being at 180 degree odds with the previous blather). 

The military's software problems, I can sincerely assure you, are no
more "formidable" than those in civilian industry, except for those
induced by external forces, primarily the Pentagon itself. The contractors
are quite willing to adopt new processes and technologies (you wouldn't
BELIEVE how many Demmings/Juran classes McDonnell held in the early 80s),
but the slap-happy world of the Pentagon-management-trend-of-the-month
club has not demonstrated itself to be a stable source of practical
guidance.

Have a nice day :>

Mark Shanks
Principal Engineer, 777 Displays
shanks@saifr0.cfsat.honeywell.com
Disclaimer: These remarks do not reflect the opinion of Honeywell, and
I might even disavow them myself.

Re: GAO report on DoD mission-critical spending

[Don Tyzuk]

Greg:

I don't find the abstract at all enlightening.  The GAO
recognizes that there " are no easy solutions ".

Choice of an implementation language is only one step in
the process of fixing the software crisis.  We also need
to learn a lot more about how to build systems.

I believe that software re-use can save the poor taxpayer
a lot of money, but we haven't yet figured out exactly how
to build software components that are "very re-usable".

I recently read an interview with a senior (maybe the chief)
software developer at Bell-Northern Research, in Ottawa. He
stated the the use of C++ has resulted in a huge libray of
objects created by various programmers on various projects.

His problem, he explained was what to do with them all?

They are activley working on cataloging, building browsers,
etc.  Unfortunatley, they have more objects than they can
use at the moment, thank-you-very-much.

So, as I agree with the general threads that the various 
governmental agencies and contractors are dragging their 
feet, the future is still to be determined as to the
eventual winner.... 

I for one, like Ada because it is very readable, even if
the author has not paid the greatest attention to readability.
I equally dislike C and C++ for it's terseness, however 
the concession is made that the C code of the Xinu OS is 
among the most readable code of ANY language I have read.
-- 
Don Tyzuk				| P.O. Box 1406
Jodrey School of Computer Science	| Wolfville, Nova Scotia
Acadia University			| CANADA     B0P 1X0
e-mail: don.tyzuk@acadiau.ca