US DHS Struggling With 720 ‘High Risk’ Purchasing Problems

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spends $7.2 billion on acquisitions per year for its 22 agencies, but the DHS still has to implement several hundred recommendations made over the past 13 years to streamline its high risk procurement program, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The 30 percent of recommendations still to be implemented comes to 720 issues, according to the figures in the report.

"GAO has made about 2,400 recommendations to DHS since 2003 to strengthen management efforts, among other things. DHS has implemented more than 70 percent of these," the report issued on Wednesday stated.

In addition to the recommendations, "DHS needs to show additional results… including demonstrating the ability to achieve sustained progress across 30 outcomes that GAO identified and DHS agreed were needed to address the high-risk area," the report pointed out.

As of March 2016, DHS had fully addressed ten of these outcomes but work remained in 20, according to report.

The GAO has reported on DHS's acquisition management for more than ten years, and the department has struggled to effectively manage its major programs, including ensuring that all major acquisitions had approved baselines and that they were affordable, the report acknowledged.