Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the Department of Defense's (DOD) acquisition of its Composite Health Care System, specifically: (1) DOD testing of competing vendors' proposed information systems; and (2) its contractor selection process.

GAO found that: (1) DOD test plans and procedures properly and reasonably reflected its requirements; (2) the test workbooks permitted thorough documentation of test results for the thousands of evaluated requirements; (3) DOD followed the test procedures consistently for the three competing vendors; (4) the DOD selection process, plans, and procedures were fair and reasonable; (5) DOD appropriately documented the evaluation of vendors' technical and cost proposals, test results, and performance during the demonstration test phase; (6) DOD corrected its earlier evaluation, documentation, and support problems; and (7) DOD properly awarded the operational test and evaluation phase contract to the vendor with the technically superior proposal and significantly lower costs.