It's Hard To Track $208 Billion in Contract Spending

The Defense Department spends $208 billion a year on service contracts and just might get around to tracking in detail what all this money buys by 2016, the Government Accountability Office reported Monday.

Development of a central contract database for Defense, GAO said, goes back to an age old problem -- all the services handle contract data differently. Defense, the watchdog said, views such an effort as "challenging given the different requirements from the military departments and components."

I guess the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force all have different ways to count from $1 to $208 billion.