Sec. 3. Findings

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Congress finds the following: The Department of Homeland Security does not consistently implement its policies and Government and private sector best practices for acquisitions and procurement. It is difficult to determine the cost of the Department’s major acquisition programs because the Department has not provided consistent, comparable updates on an annual basis. As of January 2014, the Department identified over 80 major acquisition programs costing over $300,000,000, and, based on 2011, estimates it plans to spend about $170,000,000,000 in the future on major acquisition programs.

Since 2005, the Government Accountability Office has placed Department acquisition management activities on its High-Risk List , which identifies Government operations that have greater susceptibility to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement or greater need for transformation to address economy, efficiency, or effectiveness challenges. While the Department has taken actions to address some high-risk acquisition program management issues, many programs continue to experience challenges with funding instability, workforce shortfalls, reliable cost estimates, realistic schedules, agreed-upon baseline objectives, and consistent and reliable data needed to accurately measure program performance.

Of the 77 Department major acquisition programs in 2011, the Government Accountability Office identified 42 programs that experienced cost growth, schedule slips, or both. The Department reported that the magnitude of the cost growth for 16 of the 42 programs, which increased from almost $20,000,000,000 to over $50,000,000,000 in 2011, had an aggregate increase of 166 percent. In 2012, the Government Accountability Office found that only 20 of 63 programs had Department-approved acquisition program baselines.

The Government Accountability Office also reported that the Department planned to spend more than $105 billion on programs lacking acquisition program baselines.