26 



staff gets Involved fn all phases of 



procurement It Is headed by, from left to ngm. 



Ken Qlese. Kad Schomagd, John Newell, Ron 



Uebemun and Bill Lee. 



NOAA's Audits 



Liebemun's office has been involved in 

 some way with every one of Commerce's 13 

 major systems, he says. Its three office divi- 

 sioos correspond roughJy to the three 

 phases of systems pnxnirement: systems ac- 

 quisitions, which looks at the entire acqui- 

 sition strategy, from requirements analysis 

 through design; automated information sys- 

 tems, which audits concept studies and dem- 

 onstration testing: and computer services, 

 which usually audits installed systems. 



Tlie office decides when in a system's 

 lifespan it will begin the auditing process, 

 relying primarily on the five-year plans 

 agencies submit to outline their future auto- 

 mation needs. 



To date, the office's largest project has 

 been its review of a massive modernization 

 program for the National Weather Service 

 (KWS), a division of NOAA. The moderniza- 

 tion, which began in the late 1970s, may 

 eventually cost more than $2 billion. 



NEXRAD (Next Generation Weather Ra- 

 dar), a multi-agency effort to replace con- 

 ventional weather radar with advanced 

 Doppler radar technology, is the largest sys- 

 tem the office has audited. In 1987. allega- 

 tions of improprieties in bidding for the $500 

 million contract prompted an exhaustive re- 

 view of the procurement process. The re- 

 view did not confirm the allegations, but "we 

 detemuned there was much more work 

 needed before NOAA could decide on a wm- 

 ning contractor. Audit of the winning pro- 

 posal saved $85 million," DeGeorge says. 



NOAA's National Environmental Satellite 

 Data and Information Service uses satellites 

 to feed data to Earth-based computers to be 

 used in managing global energy resources, 

 food supplies and natural resources. At least 

 two satellites are needed to supply enough 

 data for accurate modehng, but because they 

 are so essential, the satellite data service 

 proposed maintaimng a third, "spare" satel- 

 hte in orbit as well 



The problem with this idea, the auditors 

 say, is that satellites deteriorate faster in 

 orbit than on the ground. Other nsks inher- 

 ent in keeping a satellite in orbit would raise 

 the rhanrt-i that the spare would not survive 

 kmg enough to fulfill its mission. Meanwhile, 

 each launch costs NOAA about $60 million. 

 Delaymg the launches as long as possible 

 could extend each spare's lifetime by a year 

 or more, the IG's office suggested, saving at 



least $24 million in addition to launch costs. 



"The fail-safe position that NOAA wanted 

 was terribly expensive." DeGeorge says. 

 "We convinced NOAA that it was safer and 

 much dieaper to keep the spare on the 

 ground as long as possible." 



Another planned NWS system. AWIPS-90 

 (Advanced Weather Interactive Processing 

 System for the 1990s), is a highly sophisti- 

 cated telecommunications network that will 

 carry satellite weather data among individ- 

 ual weather service offices and the NWS su- 

 percomputer that processes iL The system 

 is expected to cost more than half a billion 

 dollars over its 10-year life cycle. 



The information technology office became 

 involved with the AWIFS acquisition in 

 1984. wfaen it audited the initiation phase of 

 the proposal and asked the NWS to prepare 

 a list of alternatives. When the office felt that 

 the alternatives were inadequately explored, 

 it recommended that the National Institute 

 for Standanls and Technology (NIST) assess 

 whether existmg government systems could 

 be used to meet any of the system's require- 

 ments. NIST came up with several specific 

 recommendations to help streamline devel- 

 opment and ensure the system's long-term 

 success. 



Also following the auditors' recommenda- 

 tion, the federal coordinator for meteorology 

 is developing a national plan to integrate its 

 automated surface observing system, of 

 which AWIPS-90 is a part, with the Federal 

 Aviation Administration's central weather 

 processor to ehminate redundancies in the 

 two systems. "(Ordination can save $10.5 

 million in the definition phase of the systems 

 development effort alone," Liebeiman re- 

 ported in the IG's ^M'mianmiai report to Con- 



gress for March 1989. In addition, consohda- 

 tion of devek>pment and acquisition efforts 

 couU save more than $40 million, the IG's 

 office estimates. 



Other Front-End Audits 



In 1987, the auditing staff helped persuade 

 the PTO to renegotiate a $289 milUon con- 

 tract for its massive Automated Patent Sys- 

 tem, first awarded in 1984 as part of a king- 

 range procurement of more than half a 

 Idlion dollars. (Sa "Taming tlu Paper 

 Beast, " June.) "We were concerned that 

 ... the PTO had never done an adequate 

 technical analysis of cost proposals for the 

 contract," De<}eorge stated in the Septem- 

 ber 1988 semiannual report to (xmgress. 



The problem, recalls Thomas P. Giammo, 

 assistant commissioner for information sys- 

 tems at the PTO, was tiiat PTO staff didn't 

 have the necessary expertise to undertake 

 the substantive re-analysis the office recom- 

 mended. When auditors pointed Giammo to 

 the Defense Logistics Agency for consulting 

 support, a DLA representative spent about a 

 week structuring a program to help the PTO 

 get organized, Giammo says. "It was very, 

 very helpfuL We then did the detail work." 



As a result of the analysis, the PTO was 

 able to cut its use of contractor staff by 10 

 percent and to take back almost all jobs in- 

 volving the operation of the system. A total 

 of about $20 million was saved by renego- 

 tiating the Automated Patent System con- 

 tract, the IG's office reported. 



In June 1987. then-Secretary of Com- 

 merce Makolm Baldrige asked the IG's of- 

 fice to help resolve a deUcate trade issue 

 associated with the Automated Patent Sys- 

 tem by reviewing a subcontract the PTO 



