Air Force awards $73M contract to finish DEAMS project

The Air Force has awarded Accenture Federal Services a $73 million contract to finish work on its massive—and at times troubled—enterprise resource planning project over the next 30 months.

The multibillion dollar Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System (DEAMS), which has been in the works for a dozen years, consolidates EPS systems across the service as well as the U.S. Transportation Command and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, bringing them all into one organization.

DEAMS, which currently is operational at 40 Air Force bases and a number of DFAS locations, streamlines cost accounting, purchase requests, accounts payable, financial obligations, and collections and customer billing, according to an announcement by Accenture. The system processes more than 100,000 invoices a year, managing about $800 million in monthly billings and cash collections.

“DEAMS is designed to give the U.S. Air Force a 21st century financial management system that will provide accurate, reliable and timely business information to support more effective decision-making,” Joe Chenelle, who leads Accenture’s U.S. defense and intelligence work, said in a statement.

Work on DEAMS got underway in 2003, but problems ranging from software bugs to failed risk management caused costs to balloon from a projected $1.1 billion to an estimated $2.2 billion. The target date for full implementation also slipped from 2014 to a current target of late 2017 or early 2018.

Once fully implemented, DEAMS is expected to give the Air Force a single system for delivering accurate, timely and auditable financial management information, the company said.