Army Reserve Components

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Army's management and oversight of its full-time support (FTS) program, which provides personnel to Army National Guard and reserve components to assist with the administration, recruiting, maintenance, and training tasks essential to achieving unit readiness.

GAO found that the Army: (1) split program management and oversight responsibilities among 10 organizations, with no single organization overseeing or managing FTS as a totally integrated program; (2) did not establish adequate internal controls for monitoring FTS, did not regularly conduct program effectiveness evaluations, failed to consistently act upon results of limited validation team reviews which identified misuse of personnel, and failed to report problems as material weaknesses in its annual assurance statements; (3) lacked sound justification for its requirement for 120,000 personnel; (4) used a staffing guide, without any work-load or similar analyses, to establish its requirements for individual units; (5) primarily used active guard and reserve (AGR) personnel to expand the FTS force, but did not develop guidance to differentiate between the roles of AGR personnel and military technicians or to ensure that it cost-effectively filled FTS positions; and (6) was constrained in its ability to employ military technicians by limited available funding, and experienced civilian manpower reductions.

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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