Computer Sciences Corp., the prime contractor on ECSS, collected $8.2 million in contract termination fees, part of $527 million the company was paid for its work, the Federal Times reported. The Air Force decision to end CSC’s involvement in March with the project led to the elimination of about 500 high-paying company or subcontractor jobs in Beavercreek.
The trouble-plagued program, estimated to cost $5.2 billion over its life cycle, was meant to modernize the Air Force’s logistics management system and replace more than 200 “legacy” computer systems.
Brig. Gen. Kathryn J. Johnson told the Federal Times the Air Force canceled the ECSS as a financial decision. The computer management system would have needed a $1 billion infusion to attain 20 percent of its stated goal and wouldn’t be fielded until 2020, Johnson said.
Johnson and Robert Shofner, the Air Force’s program executive officer for business and enterprise systems, told the Federal Times that CSC didn’t meet the goal of adapting commercial Oracle software to the specialized needs of ECSS.
“It was a lot of problems,” Johnson said in the interview.
The software “may not have been as developed as we would have originally liked it to be,” she added. She also pointed to the Air Force’s lack of a master schedule, acquisition strategy changes and snafus that slowed the speed the system could share data within the military branch.
The Air Force said in a release last month it will rely on its existing and modified logistics systems for 2017 audit compliance.
In an email to the Dayton Daily News, CSC spokeswoman Heather L. Williams didn’t directly respond to the reported comments, but said “CSC values the Air Force and its mission, and worked closely and cooperatively with its senior leadership to close out the ECSS contract” earlier this year.
Kimberly Pineda, an Oracle spokeswoman, declined comment Friday on the report.
The ECSS program is not the only program in trouble. The Dayton Daily News reported in June different computer system upgrades in each branch of the military were $7 billion over budget with a long history of not meeting benchmarks.
Ohio congressional lawmakers lobbied last year to save ECSS. In a September 2011 letter to a Pentagon official, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, wrote they had “deep concern” about an Air Force stop work order on part of the project that involved integration of new systems.
The action placed the program “in a level of uncertainty that is alarming,” the two wrote in a letter obtained by the Dayton Daily News. “We support the purpose and value of ECSS and strongly support the work of the Dayton workforce on this program.”
The letter pointed to Department of Defense and Air Force findings that showed several analyses concluded “ECSS is the best approach.”
Brown and Turner sent the jointly signed letter to Frank Kendall, deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
Lauren Kulik, a Brown spokeswoman, said in an email Friday: “Sen. Brown supports the work the program does and understands that the Air Force feels an updated program is necessary. He is focused on maintaining the work at Wright-Patterson.”
Turner spokesman Tom Crosson wrote Friday that Air Force leadership “pushed strongly” for ECSS, which was touted as “a solution to all the money they have, and are, wasting” on old information technology systems. ECCS was intended to save money on consolidating old systems the Air Force has said it spends $30 million per month to operate.
“Currently, it appears the Air Force is going to walk away from that (ECSS) investment at a nearly total loss,” the spokesman wrote in an email. “The letter speaks for itself in terms of Congressman Turner’s support for modernizing the deeply inefficient and costly system currently in place.”
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