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"The Army relies on commercial rail carriers for off-post rail movements, but it currently has three business models for on-post rail operations: government owned, government operated; government owned, contractor operated; and privatized. In this report, the authors evaluate the three business models and determine whether greater reliance on commercial rail assets could meet Army rail needs at a lower cost. As part of this research, they gathered data on Army rail requirements, costs, and performance at installations with deployable units and visited one installation of each type to obtain insights on the differences between the business models. The authors then developed an approach to compare the costs and risks of the three business models across installations. Finally, they estimated potential savings from privatization and determined possible risk factors, such as a decrease in responsiveness to short-notice deployments, loss of surge capacity, likelihood of accidents or violations of safety and environmental rules, and unexpected cost increases. The authors determined that, at installations with low rail activity rates where privatization may be cost effective, the Army must balance potential savings against the risks of privatization. Factors to be considered include the installation's deployment requirements, whether it shares rail crews with other installations, whether it is served by a local monopoly rail carrier, and whether infrastructure investments that could offset potential cost savings will be required."--Publisher's description.

Privatization --- Military railroads --- Railroads --- Evaluation. --- Freight --- Military aspects --- United States. --- United States. --- Transportation --- Costs. --- United States.

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As the Army has implemented initiatives to improve its basic logistics processes, it has found that these processes are hampered by a financial management system that is slow and inaccurate and that creates errors and delays. This report documents analysis supporting the Army's effort to improve its logistics financial management (FM) processes using Velocity Management's Define-Measure-Improve methodology. In defining the FM process, researchers developed process maps that showed that the delivery of conflicting information from the supply and finance systems forces units to create time-consuming, manual reconciliation processes to determine their remaining budgets. Researchers identified metrics to measure performance: quality of price and credit information and financial wait time--the time it takes for a supply transaction to be closed out in the financial system. To improve the quality of price and credit information and eliminate the need for manual reconciliation, the researchers recommended that the prices and credits in place when a transaction is first undertaken should be the prices and credits that are used for all records of the transaction.

United States. --- United States. --- United States. --- Supplies and stores. --- Management. --- Appropriations and expenditures.

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This document reports some background information on the extent and severity of the 1987-91 California drought, evaluates existing work on the economic effects of the drought, and presents an agenda for future research to make an overall estimate of the economic costs of the drought in urban areas. It recommends a survey of urban water agencies to identify drought management policies and the resulting cutbacks in water use by various customer classes; to identify an estimate of economic losses incurred by residential customers using demand curve estimates or contingent valuation methodology; to identify contingent valuation surveys of commercial sectors hard-hit by the drought, such as nurseries and landscape contractors; and to identify a brief assessment of the industrial sector, which was mostly protected from cutbacks that would have resulted in lost output or jobs. This research was partially sponsored by California Urban Water Agencies, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of 11 urban wholesale and retail water agencies.

Droughts --- Water resources development --- Municipal water supply --- Economic aspects --- Planning.

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In recent years, the Army has been willing to accept risk in installation facility sustainment to maintain warfighting readiness. However, underfunding of facility sustainment can result in higher life-cycle costs because it increases the likelihood that facility components will break down or fail prematurely. To identify strategies for improving the Army's allocation and execution of installation facility sustainment funding, the authors conducted interviews with installation Directorate of Public Works (DPW) staff and subject-matter experts in the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Army Corps of Engineers, along with a literature review of facility sustainment practices in the military Services, other public-sector organizations, and the private sector. The authors recommend that the Army allow installations more flexibility on DPW staffing within existing budgets, improve or supplement the real property and facility sustainment functions in the General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS), fund the implementation of BUILDER – a DoD-mandated Sustainment Management System (SMS) – and use it to develop longer-range models that show the effects of deferred maintenance on life-cycle costs, and develop a Mission Dependency Index (MDI) to prioritize sustainment projects and create linkages with installation readiness. At the installation level, DPW staff should implement innovative practices that have been successful at other installations; increase efforts to identify alternative sources of funding for sustainment projects, such as tenant mission funding and by leveraging community partnerships; and identify opportunities for active and reserve component units to perform projects as part of their training.