The Department of Defense is one of the largest consumers of goods and services in the world. But the acquisition process has become time consuming and burdensome. Paperless contracting - one of the initiatives of Defense Reform – is one way we can simplify and expedite the process.

There are five primary metrics that support paperless contracting. Delegated contract closeout is a sixth area being monitored for contracts delegated to the Defense Contract Management Command.

As the performance scorecard for paperless contracting shows, in 1997 paperless contracting comprised 70% of requirements, 49% of solicitations, 21% of awards, 16% of receipts and acceptances, 13% of invoices and payments, and 46% of delegated contract closeouts.

Today, numbers have risen in every category.

Estimates for January 1, 2000 are even better, with 90 percent of contracting in all categories being paperless. Over 70 Service and Defense Agency initiatives are being tracked by DoD to achieve these goals.

The Performance Scorecard for Composite Paperless Contracting shows the Fiscal Year 1996 baseline for composite paperless contracting was 28%.

Today, we are at 40%.

The DoD has made a commitment to the Vice President as a High Impact Agency under the National Partnership for Reinventing Government. Our commitment is to reduce paper transactions by 50% by the year 2000. The composite of all paperless contracting transactions has to be increased to 64% in Fiscal Year 2000 in order to meet this 50% reduction goal.

This chart shows the 1998 progress of the military services and selected defense agencies in composite paperless contracting.