Defense has ongoing struggle with container management

The GAO said the Defense Department remains hamstrung by container management inefficiencies, which result in exuberant detention fees.    A congressional watchdog agency has found the Defense Department remains hamstrung by container management inefficiencies, which results in exuberant detention fees. 
   “Container management has been a long-standing challenge,” the Government Accountability Office found in a report. “DOD has paid detention fees of about $823 million from 2003 through 2012 for retaining containers longer than allowed,” mostly due to Central Command’s activities in Afghanistan.
   Since 2012, the Defense Department has made a concerted effort to better manage commercial containers. The detention fees result from not only the “untimely return of commercial carrier-owned shipping containers in Afghanistan, but [the department’s] ability to manage and reduce these fees is limited by inaccurate and incomplete data.”   
   In August 2012, the Defense Department set the requirement that within 15 days of a shipping container’s arrival:
   
   •Receipt of the container must be recorded by the unit in the overseas location
   •The container must be unloaded
   •The responsible carrier must be notified that its container is available for pick up
   
   The department also developed a set of tracking metrics to monitor progress in meeting this requirement. 
   “However, incomplete and inaccurate data about the location and number of containers accruing detention fees hindered DOD’s ability to manage and reduce detention fees for containers in Afghanistan,” GAO reported.
   
   GAO recommended that the Defense Department:
   •Develop a list of recommendations and incorporate them into policy and guidance
   •Identify “root causes for procedural weaknesses” that cause inaccurate or incomplete container data, and develop and implement a corrective plan