New technology in place, but training falls short.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Washington PULSE

For years the Defense Department has been replacing outdated financial and business systems with modern software of the sort used in commercial industry. The Pentagon has invested billions of dollars in these new technologies--known as "enterprise resource planning" systems. One flaw in the plan, however, is that employees in charge of using these technologies have not been properly trained. "We found that the government staff did not have a lot of ERP skills," says David Fisher, the newly appointed director of the Defense Department's Business Transformation Agency.

ERP software is the...