DOD's GPRA Implementation

Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA).

GAO noted that: (1) the implementation of GPRA within DOD is in its initial stages and many implementation strategies and key approaches need to be developed, but DOD has made progress at various organizational levels in implementing GPRA or strategic planning and performance measurement initiatives consistent with GPRA; (2) DOD has developed strategic goals and objectives and is refining a set of performance measures to meet the planning requirements of GPRA; (3) some subordinate DOD organizations, building on their experience as GPRA pilots, are developing or improving strategic planning and performance measurement systems; some other defense organizations are developing or improving such systems as well; (4) GAO's work suggests and DOD officials agree that DOD's effectiveness in implementing the requirements of GPRA may be improved by better hierarchical linking of goals and performance measures; (5) for example, GAO recently examined the degree to which DOD's logistics strategic plan provides an integrated logistics roadmap for the department to support its warfighting strategy; (6) while the services' strategic plans and initiatives generally support implementation of the DOD plan, their goals, objectives, and strategies are not always directly linked; (7) DOD indicated that it will ensure that the next edition of the DOD Logistics Strategic Plan includes specific guidance to require the services to link their goals to DOD's; (8) this is important because, without this goal alignment, DOD may have difficulty meeting its departmentwide logistics goals, which are to reduce logistics response time, develop a seamless logistics system, and streamline the logistics infrastructure; (9) GAO's recent work also found that DOD's strategic information resources planning effort does not appear to link its information resources management systems development with recent initiatives focusing on consolidating or privatizing various areas of logistics operations; (10) if not linked, DOD could end up spending millions of dollars on systems designed to support functions that it might not plan to do or in organizations that might be eliminated; (11) DOD stated that it is addressing these concerns by preparing a new logistics business systems strategy; (12) GAO's review of DOD's ongoing GPRA implementation efforts suggests that hierarchically linked goals and measures will be crucial for success; (13) DOD must ensure the services implement GPRA at their level and provide goals that link DOD's department strategic goals with those of lower level components; and (14) some of the officials assigned GPRA liaison responsibilities told GAO they did not know what, if anything, they should be doing to promote GPRA principles within their organizations.