SCDigest editorial staff

The News: A report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggests the Department of Defense could be wasting millions by not re-using expensive active RFID tags.

The Impact: Not much in practice, although it has generated some funny suggestions along the lines of suggesting we need to start tagging the tags to keep track of them. This does perhaps raise questions about whether active tags could be used by the enemy to identify troop/equipment locations, as some have suggested.

The Story: Last week, the GAO sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld under the subject of “Defense Logistics: More Efficient Use of Active RFID Tags Could

Potentially Avoid Millions in Unnecessary Purchases.”

The letter states that “DOD’s use of active RFID tags can be more efficiently managed, potentially avoiding millions of dollars in unnecessary tag purchases. DOD’s current RFID policy does not require active tags to be returned or reused even though these tags are designed for repeated reuse.”

Keep in mind these are high end active tags used to track containers and large pieces of equipment. The report says the average cost per active tag is about $100.00. The DoD has purchased about $1.3 million of these tags in the past 7 or 8 years.

The actual purchase patterns of the tags is illustrated in the table below:

While designed for a long life and repeated use, the GAO says that “Estimates of tag reuse by DOD component officials and DOD tag reuse data as of May 2005 indicate that the majority of active RFID tags had not been returned or reused more than twice. For example, Army and DLA officials estimate that 10 percent of active tags were being returned for reuse before Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom and only 3 percent after. Moreover, during the period May 2002 through May 2005, DOD active tag use data for 614,681 tags show that 84 percent of the tags (514,455 tags) had been used only one or two times. Only 16 percent of the tags (100,226 tags) were reported as being reused more than twice. Furthermore, DOD does not routinely monitor or account for reuse of all active RFID tags because it has not developed procedures to

do this.”

The letter says RFID tag inventory can be more efficiently managed, and offers the following suggestions:

• Modify the July 30, 2004, RFID policy and other operational guidance to require that active RFID tags be returned for reuse or be reused by the military services and other users.

• Direct the secretaries of each military service and administrators of other components to establish procedures to track and monitor the use of active RFID tags, to include:

  o determining requirements for the number of tags needed,

  o compiling an accurate inventory of the number of tags currently owned,

  and

  o establishing procedures to monitor and track tags, including purchases,

  reuse, losses, repairs, and any other categories that would assist

  management’s oversight of these tags.

There are a couple of interesting twists. First, it’s not clear how the GAO “locked on” to this rather obscure and relatively minor cost item to begin with – seems likely someone pointed them in this direction. Second, some have suggested that tags in theater (Iraq) are being purposely disabled once the containers or equipment have arrive, under the belief (accurate or not) that the active signal could be used by the enemy to identify troop positions.

Do you think the DoD should do more to re-use its expensive tags, or is the GAO missing some key realities of the battlefield? And what made them look at this issue to begin with? Would active tags provide potential positioning info to the enemy, and our their other answers if so? Let us know your thoughts?