Financial Management

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Montgomery GI Bill Reserve Program, focusing on: (1) the timeliness and accuracy of the eligibility data that the Department of Defense (DOD) submitted to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA); (2) DOD plans for improving the timeliness and accuracy of eligibility data; (3) DOD accuracy in contributing to the Education Benefits Fund; and (4) DOD efforts to collect amounts that program participants owed the government.

GAO found that: (1) DOD did not submit timely and accurate eligibility data to VA; (2) DOD took an average of 91 to 351 days to submit eligibility data to VA, primarily due to system incompatibility and inadequate training; (3) DOD took actions to improve data accuracy, but due to system incompatibility, data timeliness continued to be a problem; (4) DOD established manpower population count and per-capita normal cost as the two elements for computing contributions to the fund, and assigned a board to define how the reserve components should determine the manpower population count and per-capita normal cost; (5) the military services' failure to properly apply the manpower population count and the board's inability to develop a reliable per-capita normal cost resulted in inaccurate monthly contributions to the fund; (6) DOD and VA did not ensure proper recordkeeping and collection of program participants' debts, and had not reached agreement on responsibility for such debts; and (7) DOD and VA data indicated that over 8,200 individuals owed the government about $6 million for breach of contract, and VA did not pursue collection of another $10 million owed by program participants for other reasons.

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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