Survey of the Military Command Structure in Europe and Its Relationship to the U.S. Readiness Posture

A recent review of the U.S. Command Structure in Europe showed that a number of management headquarters functions in Europe were not being reported.

Reasons that some of the functions were not reported included: (1) the Department of Defense's (DOD) current practice of identifying organizations, the organizational approach, rather than personnel performing management functions, the functional approach, to identify management headquarters activities does not give an accurate picture of the number of personnel actually performing management headquarters functions; (2) the size of management headquarters in Europe has not been accurately reported under the existing organizational approach, primarily because of the omissions of certain support activities and some indirect hire civilian personnel; and (3) some activities which meet the DOD definition of management headquarters are not being counted. A GAO report in April 1976 concluded that accounting for management headquarters personnel under the organizational approach is inadequate and recommended that DOD gradually implement a system to account for headquarters personnel on the basis of type of work performed. DOD did not agree with this recommendation and stated that the current organizational approach is adequate.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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