Military Personnel
DOD Needs to Conduct a Data-Driven Analysis of Active Military Personnel Levels Required to Implement the Defense Strategy Gao ID: GAO-05-200 February 1, 2005Congress recently increased active military personnel levels for the Army and the Marine Corps. The Secretary of Defense has undertaken initiatives to use military personnel more efficiently such as rebalancing high-demand skills between active and reserve components. In view of concerns about active personnel, GAO reviewed the ways in which the Department of Defense (DOD) determines personnel requirements and is managing initiatives to assign a greater proportion of active personnel to warfigthing duties. GAO assessed the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) (1) has conducted a data-based analysis of active military personnel needed to implement the national defense strategy and (2) has a plan for making more efficient use of active military personnel and evaluating the plan's results.
Our prior work has shown that valid and reliable data about the number of employees required to meet an agency's needs are critical because human capital shortfalls can threaten the agency's ability to perform missions efficiently and effectively. OSD provides policy and budget guidance on active personnel levels and has taken some steps toward rebalancing skills between active and reserve components, but it has not conducted a comprehensive, data-driven analysis to assess the number of active personnel needed to implement the defense strategy. A key reason why it has not conducted such a comprehensive analysis is that OSD has focused on limiting personnel costs in order to fund competing priorities, such as transformation. OSD conducts some analyses of active personnel, such as monitoring actual personnel levels, and the services have processes for allocating the active personnel they are authorized to key missions. However, OSD does not systematically review the services' processes to ensure that decisions about active personnel levels are linked to the defense strategy and provide required capabilities within acceptable risk. If OSD conducted a data-driven analysis that linked active personnel levels to strategy, it could more effectively demonstrate to Congress a sound basis for the active personnel levels it requests. The quadrennial review of the defense program planned for 2005 represents an opportunity for a systematic reevaluation of personnel levels to ensure that they are consistent with the defense strategy. Although OSD has identified some near- and long-term initiatives for assigning a greater proportion of active personnel to warfighting positions, it has not developed a comprehensive plan to implement them that assigns responsibility for implementation, identifies resources, and provides for evaluation of progress toward objectives. OSD officials told us a key reason why OSD does not have a plan to oversee its initiatives is that they have had to respond to other higher priorities. Sustained leadership and a plan for implementing initiatives and measuring progress can help decision makers determine if initiatives are achieving their desired results. Without such a plan, OSD cannot be sure that initiatives are being implemented in a timely manner and having the intended results. For example, the initiative to convert military positions to civilian or contractor performance is behind schedule. Specifically, OSD's goal was to convert 10,000 positions by the end of fiscal year 2004; however, the services estimate that they had converted only about 34 percent of these positions. By establishing performance metrics and collecting data to evaluate the results of its initiatives, OSD could better determine its progress in providing more active personnel for warfighting duties and inform Congress of its results.
RecommendationsOur 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.
Director: Team: Phone:GAO-05-200, Military Personnel: DOD Needs to Conduct a Data-Driven Analysis of Active Military Personnel Levels Required to Implement the Defense Strategy
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Report to Congressional Committees:
United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO:
February 2005:
Military Personnel:
DOD Needs to Conduct a Data-Driven Analysis of Active Military
Personnel Levels Required to Implement the Defense Strategy:
GAO-05-200:
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-05-200, a report to congressional committees:
Why GAO Did This Study:
Congress recently increased active military personnel levels for the
Army and the Marine Corps. The Secretary of Defense has undertaken
initiatives to use military personnel more efficiently such as
rebalancing high-demand skills between active and reserve components.
In view of concerns about active personnel, GAO reviewed the ways in
which the Department of Defense (DOD) determines personnel requirements
and is managing initiatives to assign a greater proportion of active
personnel to warfigthing duties. GAO assessed the extent to which the
Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) (1) has conducted a data-based
analysis of active military personnel needed to implement the national
defense strategy and (2) has a plan for making more efficient use of
active military personnel and evaluating the plan‘s results.
What GAO Found:
Our prior work has shown that valid and reliable data about the number
of employees required to meet an agency‘s needs are critical because
human capital shortfalls can threaten the agency‘s ability to perform
missions efficiently and effectively. OSD provides policy and budget
guidance on active personnel levels and has taken some steps toward
rebalancing skills between active and reserve components, but it has
not conducted a comprehensive, data-driven analysis to assess the
number of active personnel needed to implement the defense strategy. A
key reason why it has not conducted such a comprehensive analysis is
that OSD has focused on limiting personnel costs in order to fund
competing priorities, such as transformation. OSD conducts some
analyses of active personnel, such as monitoring actual personnel
levels, and the services have processes for allocating the active
personnel they are authorized to key missions. However, OSD does not
systematically review the services‘ processes to ensure that decisions
about active personnel levels are linked to the defense strategy and
provide required capabilities within acceptable risk. If OSD conducted
a data-driven analysis that linked active personnel levels to strategy,
it could more effectively demonstrate to Congress a sound basis for the
active personnel levels it requests. The quadrennial review of the
defense program planned for 2005 represents an opportunity for a
systematic reevaluation of personnel levels to ensure that they are
consistent with the defense strategy.
Although OSD has identified some near- and long-term initiatives for
assigning a greater proportion of active personnel to warfighting
positions, it has not developed a comprehensive plan to implement them
that assigns responsibility for implementation, identifies resources,
and provides for evaluation of progress toward objectives. OSD
officials told us a key reason why OSD does not have a plan to oversee
its initiatives is that they have had to respond to other higher
priorities. Sustained leadership and a plan for implementing
initiatives and measuring progress can help decision makers determine
if initiatives are achieving their desired results. Without such a
plan, OSD cannot be sure that initiatives are being implemented in a
timely manner and having the intended results. For example, the
initiative to convert military positions to civilian or contractor
performance is behind schedule. Specifically, OSD‘s goal was to convert
10,000 positions by the end of fiscal year 2004; however, the services
estimate that they had converted only about 34 percent of these
positions. By establishing performance metrics and collecting data to
evaluate the results of its initiatives, OSD could better determine its
progress in providing more active personnel for warfighting duties and
inform Congress of its results.
What GAO Recommends:
To facilitate decision making on active military personnel levels and
achieve greater efficiency, GAO recommends that the Secretary of
Defense (1) establish, as part of the next quadrennial review, an OSD-
led, systematic approach to assess active personnel levels needed to
execute the defense strategy and report its analysis and conclusions to
Congress and (2) develop a plan to manage and evaluate DOD‘s
initiatives designed to assign a greater portion of active personnel to
warfighting positions. DOD agreed with the recommendations.
www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-200.
To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on
the link above. For more information, contact Janet St. Laurent at
(202) 512-4402 or stlaurentj@gao.gov.
[End of section]
Contents:
Letter:
Results in Brief:
Background:
OSD Has Not Conducted A Comprehensive, Data-Driven Analysis to Assess
Active Personnel Requirements to Implement the Defense Strategy:
OSD Does Not Have Comprehensive Plans to Manage Near-and Long-Term
Initiatives to Increase the Proportion of Active Personnel in
Warfighting Positions:
Military-to-Civilian Position Conversion and Active and Reserve
Component Rebalancing Initiatives Are Not Meeting Expected Goals or
Time Frames:
Conclusions:
Recommendations for Executive Action:
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Defense:
Appendix III: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:
Tables:
Table 1: Congressionally Authorized Active Duty End Strength Levels
Compared to Actual End Strength Levels for Fiscal Years 2000 through
2005:
Table 2: Long-Term Initiatives for Achieving Greater Efficiencies in
the Active Duty Force:
Figures:
Figure 1: Comparison of OSD's and the Services' Plans for Military-to-
Civilian Conversions for Fiscal Years 2004 and 2005 and the Number of
Conversions Completed in Fiscal Year 2004:
Figure 2: Comparison of OSD's and the Services' Plans to Reassign
Active Military Positions to High-Demand Skills and the Number of
Positions Reassigned in Fiscal Year 2004:
Abbreviations:
DOD: Department of Defense:
OSD: Office of the Secretary of Defense:
United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
February 1, 2005:
Congressional Committees:
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, changed the security
environment of the United States. The Department of Defense
(DOD)[Footnote 1] now faces multiple complex threats both overseas and
at home. U.S. forces, particularly Army and Marine Corps ground forces,
have experienced a high pace of operations in support of missions in
Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations. This pace has led to questions
about whether the U.S. armed forces have enough active military
personnel to carry out and sustain a wide range of ongoing and
potential future military operations. In the context of the high pace
of operations, the Secretary of Defense permitted a temporary increase
of 30,000 Army active duty military personnel in January 2004 to enable
the Army to convert its combat forces into more agile and deployable
units while continuing to support ongoing operations. Subsequently, in
October 2004, Congress authorized increases in personnel for the Army
and the Marine Corps. However, the services' active personnel needs are
likely to be the subject of continuing debate because increases in
active personnel entail significant near-and long-term costs that
compete with other priorities. For example, the Army estimates that
adding 30,000 active duty soldiers to its ranks will cost about $3.6
billion annually. Senior DOD officials thus want to ensure that the
department uses active personnel as efficiently as possible before
personnel levels are permanently increased.
We prepared this report under the Comptroller General's statutory
authority and are sending it to you because it contains information
that will be useful for your oversight and authorization
responsibilities for active military personnel. We reviewed how the
Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) determines active military
personnel requirements and manages initiatives to assign active
personnel from infrastructure or support positions to warfighting
positions. Our objectives for this work were to assess the extent to
which (1) OSD has conducted a data-based analysis of active military
personnel needed to implement the national defense strategy and (2) OSD
has a plan for making more efficient use of active military personnel
and evaluating the plan's results. We did not examine reserve component
requirements.
To assess OSD's oversight of active military personnel requirements, we
examined OSD's involvement in determining personnel requirements,
including policy and budget guidance. We also assessed the extent to
which OSD reviews service processes for determining military personnel
requirements and allocating personnel to authorized positions. Also,
relying on our prior work on best practices in human capital
management, we examined assessments that OSD and the services use to
determine requirements and inform decision making. To assess OSD's and
the services' management and implementation of initiatives to use
military personnel more efficiently, we collected and analyzed
information on key initiatives and examined the planning,
implementation, and oversight issues that will likely affect their
success. We conducted our review from August 2003 through January 2005
in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. We
determined that the data used were sufficiently reliable for our
objectives and in the context in which the data are presented. Further
information on our scope and methodology and data reliability
assessment appears in appendix I.
Results in Brief:
Our prior work has shown that valid and reliable data about the number
of employees required to meet an agency's needs are critical because
human capital shortfalls can threaten the agency's ability to perform
its missions efficiently and effectively, especially when the
environment has changed significantly.[Footnote 2] OSD provides policy
and budget guidance to the services as to the numbers of active
personnel they will be authorized and performs some assessments, such
as monitoring actual personnel levels, but it has not conducted a
comprehensive, data-driven analysis to identify the total numbers of
active military personnel that are needed to execute the national
defense strategy. A key reason why OSD has not conducted a
comprehensive analysis of active personnel needs is that, in balancing
competing priorities within its budgets, it has sought to limit active
personnel levels in order to devote funds to other priorities, such as
transformation. OSD has encouraged the services to rebalance skills in
the active and reserve components to ensure that forces are quickly
available and have required skills. The services have various processes
for determining the numbers and types of positions needed to perform
their priority missions within acceptable levels of risk, although
several key assessments that could impact their long-term personnel
needs are ongoing. However, OSD does not review the services'
requirements processes and their results on a systematic basis to
ensure that decisions about the levels of active personnel are driven
by data that establish clear links between personnel levels and
capabilities needed to achieve the goals of the defense strategy.
Conducting a data-driven analysis that links active personnel levels to
the defense strategy could enable OSD to more effectively demonstrate
to Congress a sound basis for the level of active military personnel it
requests. The 2005 quadrennial review of the defense program[Footnote
3] represents an opportunity to conduct such an analysis.
OSD hopes to avert the need to increase active personnel levels by
making more efficient use of active duty personnel within each service,
although it does not have a comprehensive plan to manage several
initiatives it has identified and DOD's progress in implementing some
of its initiatives is lagging behind its stated goals. Specifically,
OSD has not developed a comprehensive plan that assigns clear
responsibility for managing the initiatives, including identifying
resources needed to implement them, establishing performance metrics,
and measuring progress. OSD has not developed such a plan because the
officials given this responsibility have had competing demands on their
time and other issues have taken priority. Sustained leadership and a
plan for implementing initiatives and measuring progress can help
decision makers determine if DOD's initiatives are achieving their
desired results. The services are already falling behind the
quantitative goals and time frames for the initiatives OSD initially
approved to convert military positions to civilian or contractor
performance and transfer personnel from low-demand specialties to
specialties in higher demand. For example, the services may have
difficulty in meetings its goals to reassign servicemembers to
different high-demand skills because training facilities may not be
available immediately to accommodate them. Also, senior DOD officials
have recently stated that about 300,000 military personnel are in
positions that could be performed by civilians or contractors. However,
this number is based on a 1997 DOD study, and more recent data compiled
by OSD indicate that only about 44,000 military personnel are in
positions that could potentially be converted to civilians or
contractors over the long-term. In December 2003, OSD set a near-term
goal for the services to convert about 20,070 military positions to
civilian or private-sector contractor positions in fiscal years 2004
and 2005. However, the services did not meet their 2004 goals and will
face obstacles in achieving the 2005 goals because of the time it takes
to hire and train replacement personnel, among other reasons. Without a
comprehensive plan to manage implementation of its initiatives and
assess results, OSD will not be able to determine whether the
initiatives are having the desired effect of providing more active
military personnel for warfighting duties, develop mitigation plans
where needed, and keep Congress informed of the results.
To facilitate decision making on active military personnel levels and
achieve greater efficiency, we are making recommendations to the
Secretary of Defense to (1) establish an OSD-led, systematic approach
to assess the levels of active military personnel needed to execute the
defense strategy as part of the next quadrennial review and report its
analysis and conclusions to Congress and (2) develop a plan to manage
and evaluate DOD's initiatives to assign a greater portion of active
military personnel to warfighting duties. The department agreed with
our recommendations and cited actions it is taking in its 2005
quadrennial review of defense programs to assess the levels of active
and reserve personnel and to improve its oversight and evaluation of
initiatives to reduce the stress on the force.
Background:
For the past several years, DOD has planned and budgeted for about 1.4
million active military personnel active duty forces: about 482,400 in
the Army; 359,300 in the Air Force; 373,800 in the Navy; and 175,000 in
the Marine Corps. These active duty personnel levels have been
generally stable since the mid-1990s, when forces were reduced from
their Cold War levels of almost 2 million active military personnel.
Active duty personnel are considered to be on duty all the time.
Congress authorizes annually the number of personnel that each service
may have at the end of a given fiscal year. This number is known as
authorized end strength. Certain events, such as changes between
planned and actual retention rates, may cause differences between the
congressionally authorized levels and the actual numbers of people on
board at the end of a fiscal year. Table 1 shows the congressionally
authorized levels for fiscal years 2000 through 2005 as compared with
the services' military personnel actually on board at the end of fiscal
years 2000 through 2004.
Table 1: Congressionally Authorized Active Duty End Strength Levels
Compared to Actual End Strength Levels for Fiscal Years 2000 through
2005:
Army authorization;
Fiscal year: 2000: 480,000;
Fiscal year: 2001: 480,000;
Fiscal year: 2002: 480,000;
Fiscal year: 2003: 480,000;
Fiscal year: 2004: 482,400;
Fiscal year: 2005: 502,400.
Actual end strength;
Fiscal year: 2000: 482,170;
Fiscal year: 2001: 480,801;
Fiscal year: 2002: 486,542;
Fiscal year: 2003: 499,301;
Fiscal year: 2004: 499,543;
Fiscal year: 2005: NA.
Percentage difference between actual end strength and authorization;
Fiscal year: 2000: 0.45%;
Fiscal year: 2001: 0.17%;
Fiscal year: 2002: 1.36%;
Fiscal year: 2003: 4.02%;
Fiscal year: 2004: 3.55%;
Fiscal year: 2005: NA.
Air Force authorization;
Fiscal year: 2000: 360,877;
Fiscal year: 2001: 357,000;
Fiscal year: 2002: 358,800;
Fiscal year: 2003: 359,000;
Fiscal year: 2004: 359,300;
Fiscal year: 2005: 359,700.
Actual end strength;
Fiscal year: 2000: 355,654;
Fiscal year: 2001: 353,571;
Fiscal year: 2002: 368,251;
Fiscal year: 2003: 375,062;
Fiscal year: 2004: 376,616;
Fiscal year: 2005: NA.
Percentage difference between actual end strength and authorization;
Fiscal year: 2000: -1.45%;
Fiscal year: 2001: -0.96%;
Fiscal year: 2002: 2.63%;
Fiscal year: 2003: 4.47%;
Fiscal year: 2004: 4.81%;
Fiscal year: 2005: NA.
Navy authorization;
Fiscal year: 2000: 372,037;
Fiscal year: 2001: 372,642;
Fiscal year: 2002: 376,000;
Fiscal year: 2003: 375,700;
Fiscal year: 2004: 373,800;
Fiscal year: 2005: 365,900.
Actual end strength;
Fiscal year: 2000: 373,193;
Fiscal year: 2001: 377,810;
Fiscal year: 2002: 385,051;
Fiscal year: 2003: 382,235;
Fiscal year: 2004: 373,197;
Fiscal year: 2005: NA.
Percentage difference between actual end strength and authorization;
Fiscal year: 2000: 0.31%;
Fiscal year: 2001: 1.39%;
Fiscal year: 2002: 2.41%;
Fiscal year: 2003: 1.74%;
Fiscal year: 2004: -0.16%;
Fiscal year: 2005: NA.
Marine Corps authorization;
Fiscal year: 2000: 172,518;
Fiscal year: 2001: 172,600;
Fiscal year: 2002: 172,600;
Fiscal year: 2003: 175,000;
Fiscal year: 2004: 175,000;
Fiscal year: 2005: 178,000.
Actual end strength;
Fiscal year: 2000: 173,321;
Fiscal year: 2001: 172,934;
Fiscal year: 2002: 173,733;
Fiscal year: 2003: 177,779;
Fiscal year: 2004: 177,480;
Fiscal year: 2005: NA.
Percentage difference between actual end strength and authorization;
Fiscal year: 2000: 0.47%;
Fiscal year: 2001: 0.19%;
Fiscal year: 2002: 0.66%;
Fiscal year: 2003: 1.59%;
Fiscal year: 2004: 1.41%;
Fiscal year: 2005: NA.
Source: GAO analysis of DOD data.
[End of table]
As table 1 shows, the Army and the Air Force exceeded their authorized
end strengths by more than 3 percent in fiscal years 2003 and 2004.
The Secretary of Defense has statutory authority to increase the
services' end strengths by up to 3 percent above authorized levels for
a given fiscal year if such action is deemed to serve the national
interest.[Footnote 4] In addition, if at the end of any fiscal year
there is in effect a war or national emergency, the President may waive
end strength authorization levels for that fiscal year.[Footnote 5] On
September 14, 2001, the President declared a state of national
emergency and delegated end strength waiver authority to the Secretary
of Defense.[Footnote 6] Since then, the President has annually renewed
the national state of emergency as well as end strength waiver
authorities specified in Executive Order 13223. In January 2004, the
Secretary of Defense exercised the President's authority and increased
temporarily the Army's end strength by 30,000 for fiscal years 2004
through 2009 to facilitate the Army's reorganization while continuing
ongoing operations.
While the Secretary of Defense's goal is ultimately to have the Army
return to an active military personnel level of 482,400 by 2009, in
October 2004, Congress increased the fiscal year 2005 end strength of
the Army by 20,000 personnel, the Marine Corps by 3,000, and the Air
Force by 400.[Footnote 7] Congress also authorized additional authority
for increases of 10,000 active Army personnel and 6,000 Marines through
fiscal year 2009. In contrast, Congress reduced authorized end strength
for the Navy by 7,900 personnel from the fiscal year 2004 level.
Moreover, Congress directed that for fiscal year 2005, the Army will
fund active military personnel increases in excess of 482,400 and the
Marine Corps will fund active military personnel increases in excess of
175,000 through either a contingent emergency reserve fund or an
emergency supplemental appropriation.
OSD Has Not Conducted A Comprehensive, Data-Driven Analysis to Assess
Active Personnel Requirements to Implement the Defense Strategy:
Our prior work has shown that valid and reliable data about the number
of employees an agency requires are critical in preventing shortfalls
that threaten its ability to economically, efficiently, and effectively
perform its missions.[Footnote 8] Although OSD has processes through
which it issues policy and budget guidance that set the overall
priorities for defense activities, including personnel levels, it does
not have a process for comprehensively analyzing the active personnel
levels needed to execute the defense strategy within acceptable levels
of risk. OSD has not placed an emphasis on reviewing active military
personnel requirements, focusing instead on limiting personnel costs in
order to fund competing priorities such as transformation. The services
have processes to establish their active duty requirements; however,
service processes vary in their methodologies, and several major
reviews are still ongoing and have not fully identified long-term
personnel needs. Although OSD has performed some reviews related to
active duty levels, it does not review the services' results in a
systematic way to ensure that decisions on the numbers of active
military personnel are driven by data that make clear the links between
personnel levels and strategic goals, such as the defense strategy.
Conducting such a review could enable OSD to more effectively
demonstrate how the services' requirements for active military
personnel provide the capabilities to execute the defense strategy
within an acceptable level of risk. Further, OSD could provide more
complete information to Congress about how active military personnel
requirements for each service are changing and about the implications
of changes for future funding and budget priorities. The quadrennial
review of the defense program planned for 2005 represents an
opportunity for a systematic analysis and reevaluation of personnel
levels to ensure that they are consistent with the defense strategy.
Human Capital Best Practices Rely on Data-Driven Analyses to Guide
Decision Making:
Our prior work has shown that valid and reliable data about the number
of employees an agency requires are critical if the agency is to
spotlight areas for attention before crises develop, such as human
capital shortfalls that threaten an agency's ability to economically,
efficiently, and effectively perform its missions. We have designated
human capital management as a governmentwide high-risk area in which
acquiring and developing a staff whose size, skills, and deployment
meet agency needs is a particular challenge. To meet this challenge,
federal managers need to direct considerable time, energy, and targeted
investments toward managing human capital strategically, focusing on
developing long-term strategies for acquiring, developing, and
retaining a workforce that is clearly linked to achieving the agency's
mission and goals.
The processes that an agency uses to manage its workforce can vary, but
our prior work has shown that data-driven decision making is one of the
critical factors in successful strategic workforce management. High-
performing organizations routinely use current, valid, and reliable
data to inform decisions about current and future workforce needs,
including data on the appropriate number of employees, key
competencies, and skills mix needed for mission accomplishment, and
appropriate deployment of staff across the organizations. In addition,
high-performing organizations also stay alert to emerging mission
demands and remain open to reevaluating their human capital practices.
Changes in the security environment and defense strategy represent
junctures at which DOD could systematically reevaluate service
personnel levels to determine whether they are consistent with
strategic objectives.
In 1999, Congress created a permanent requirement for DOD to conduct a
review of the defense program every 4 years and to report on its
findings.[Footnote 9] During these reviews, DOD is required, among
other things, to define sufficient force structure[Footnote 10] and
"other elements" of the defense program that would be required to
execute successfully the full range of missions called for in the
national defense strategy and to identify a budget plan that would be
required to provide sufficient resources to execute successfully these
missions at a low-to-moderate level of risk. The quadrennial review of
the defense program thus represents an opportunity for DOD to review
elements related to force structure, such as the total numbers of
military personnel, both active duty and reserve, that are needed to
execute the defense strategy most efficiently and effectively. Based on
the legislative requirements, DOD plans to conduct a quadrennial review
in 2005 and publish its next report in 2006.
The terrorist attacks of September 11 changed the nation's security
environment. Shortly thereafter, DOD issued a new national defense
strategy in its 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report.[Footnote 11]
The 2001 report outlined a new risk management framework consisting of
four dimensions of risk--force management, operational, future
challenges, and institutional--to inform the consideration of trade-off
decisions among key performance objectives within resource constraints.
According to DOD's Fiscal Year 2003 Performance and Accountability
Report,[Footnote 12] these risk areas are to form the basis for DOD's
annual performance goals. In November 2004, DOD reported its
performance results for fiscal year 2004, noting that it met some of
its performance goals associated with these risk management areas.
Our prior work suggests that agency leaders can use valid and reliable
data to manage risk by highlighting areas for attention before crises
develop and to identify opportunities for improving agency results. As
agency officials seek to ensure that risk remains balanced across their
agencies' activities and investments, they can adjust existing
performance goals. Likewise, they can create new performance goals to
gather data about critical activities.
OSD Provides Policy and Budget Guidance to the Services but Does Not
Conduct or Review Analyses of Active Personnel Requirements:
OSD has recognized that the active and reserve forces have been
challenged to provide ready forces for current operations, including
high demand for some support skills, such as civil affairs and military
police, and is taking steps to achieve a number of objectives, such as
improving the responsiveness of the force and helping ease stress on
units and individuals with skills in high demand. For example, the
Secretary of Defense, in a July 9, 2003, memorandum, directed the
services to examine how to rebalance the capabilities in the active and
reserve forces. The services had already undertaken a number of steps
to address requirements for high-demand skills sets as a part of their
ongoing manpower management analyses. For example, in 2002 the Army
began planning for fiscal years 2004 through 2009 to address high-
demand areas, such as military police. However, the Secretary's
memorandum accelerated the services' rebalancing efforts, which are
critical to establishing requirements for active personnel.
OSD provides policy and budget guidance to the services on balancing
the costs of active personnel with other funding priorities, such as
transformation. Its approach to active personnel levels has been to
limit growth and initiate efforts to use current military personnel
levels more efficiently. OSD also conducts a number of ongoing and
periodic reviews and assessments related to active military personnel
levels, although these do not represent a systematic analysis of
requirements for active military personnel needed to perform missions
in the nation's defense strategy. For example:
* The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report identified the defense
strategy that guided DOD's analysis of the force structure. Under the
new strategy, DOD reported it needed sufficient forces to defend the
homeland, provide forward deterrence, execute warfighting missions, and
conduct smaller-scale contingency operations. Thus, DOD shifted its
force planning approach from optimizing the force for conflicts in two
particular regions to providing a range of capabilities for a variety
of operations, wherever they may occur. The report concluded that the
department's existing force structure was sufficient to execute the
redesigned defense strategy at moderate risk, but it did not refer to a
specific OSD-led analysis to reassess the impact of the new
capabilities-based planning on the numbers of military personnel
needed. DOD officials said that the 2005 review may include a top-down
review of end strength but did not provide further details about the
specific guidance to implement such a review.
* To ensure that the services comply with congressionally authorized
active personnel levels on duty at the end of a fiscal year, OSD
monitors service reports for personnel on board. According to some
service officials, managing personnel levels is challenging for the
services because they cannot always control personnel management
factors, such as retention and retirement rates, which are affected by
servicemembers' personal decisions. Compliance with authorized
personnel levels is one of the performance metrics that DOD presents in
its Performance and Accountability Report. According to the
department's fiscal year 2003 report,[Footnote 13] for fiscal years
1999 through 2002, DOD met its goal of not exceeding authorized levels
by more than 2 percent. However, in fiscal year 2003, the Army and the
Air Force did not meet this goal, having exceeded authorized limits by
4 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively, in order to maintain
sufficient troops to fight a global war on terrorism. Air Force
officials told us that better than expected recruitment and retention
of personnel also caused the Air Force to exceed the authorized limit.
Also, the Army's exercise of stop loss authority,[Footnote 14] which
prevents servicemembers from leaving the service even if they are
eligible to retire or their service contracts expire, may have
contributed to its overages in fiscal year 2003. DOD's fiscal year 2004
Performance and Accountability Report shows that the Army and the Air
Force again did not meet the performance goal, exceeding authorized
levels, by 3.7 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively; the Navy and the
Marine Corps did meet the goal.[Footnote 15] While this measure is
important for compliance with congressional direction, it cannot be
used to determine whether the active force has enough personnel to
accomplish its missions successfully because it does not assess the
extent to which end strength levels meet the nation's defense strategy
at an acceptable level of risk.
* DOD's annual report to Congress on manpower requirements for fiscal
year 2005[Footnote 16] broadly states a justification for DOD's
requested active military personnel, but it does not provide specific
analyses to support the justification. Instead, the report provides
summaries on personnel, such as the allocation of active military
personnel between operating forces and infrastructure. Although the
types of operating forces are specified, for example, "expeditionary
forces," the specific capabilities associated with such forces are not
identified. The report also provides the active military personnel data
for the near term--fiscal years 2003 through 2005; it does not,
however, contain data for the department's long-term planned
allocations. Although the report stated that DOD will continue to
review the adequacy of military capabilities and associated end
strength requirements, the Office of the Secretary of Defense
(including the Offices of Policy; Personnel and Readiness; Comptroller;
and Program Analysis and Evaluation), Joint Staff, and some service
officials we interviewed could not identify a specific process or an
OSD-led analysis in which the department reexamines the basis for
active military personnel levels.
OSD coordinates with the services on active personnel levels throughout
the department's planning and budgeting cycle, but it has not
established a process that would enable it to periodically examine the
requirements for the active military personnel and ensure that
decisions are driven by data that establish links between active
military personnel levels and key missions required by the national
defense strategy. For example, OSD does not systematically examine or
validate the services' methodologies or results to assess personnel
levels across the active force. Further, OSD does not systematically
collect data that would enable it to monitor how the services are
allocating personnel to key warfighting and support functions.
The Services Use Varied Processes to Assess Changing Needs for Active
Personnel, but OSD Has Not Conducted Systematic Analyses across the
Services:
Although each of the services has processes for assessing military
personnel requirements, the extent to which OSD has analyzed the
results of these processes is not clear. The services use different
methodologies for assessing their active personnel requirements, and
their processes and initiatives have different time frames. In
addition, several key efforts to assess requirements are still ongoing
and have not yet identified long-term requirements. These processes are
described below.
* The Army generates personnel requirements through a biennial process
known as Total Army Analysis. During the initial stages of this
process, Army force planners assess the numbers and types of units
needed to carry out missions specified in DOD and Army guidance. The
most recent Total Army Analysis--called Total Army Analysis 2011
because it provides the force structure foundation for the Army's
fiscal year 2006 through 2011 planning cycle--included analyses of
operating force requirements for homeland defense, major combat
operations, forward deterrence, and ongoing military operations, among
others, as well as for personnel who operate installations and provide
support services. During the subsequent resourcing phase of the
process, Army officials determine how best to allocate the limited
number of positions authorized by OSD among active and reserve
component units across the Army's force structure to minimize risk to
priority missions.
The Army completed an initial version of Total Army Analysis 2011 in
spring 2004, but the Army continues to assess requirements as it
carries out changes to its basic force structure. These changes,
discussed in the Army Campaign Plan, alter the way in which the service
organizes and staffs its combat forces, and therefore will have
significant impacts on the numbers of active personnel the Army will
need. In place of the existing 10 active divisions, each comprising
about 3 combat brigades and associated support units, the Army's new
force structure will be based on modular combat brigades, each with its
own support units. Under current plans, when the new structure is fully
implemented in 2006, the Army will have 43 combat brigades, an increase
of 10 brigades from the 33 it had under the traditional divisional
structure. Although the Army has begun implementing plans to create a
modular force structure, several aspects of these plans are uncertain
or have yet to be determined. For example, the Army is considering
increasing the number of brigades it will have from 43 to 48. This
increase could require approximately 17,000 to 18,000 more personnel
depending on the types of brigades established. The Army plans to make
the decision by fiscal year 2006 based on resource considerations as
well as the status of ongoing military operations. Further, while the
Army has developed personnel requirements for its planned modular
combat brigades, it has not yet determined the overall number or
composition of all the support units, such as reconnaissance, which it
will need to support those brigades.
* The Navy uses two separate processes to assess and validate
requirements for its operating forces and its infrastructure forces.
While the processes vary in scope and methodology, both are based on
activities' workloads. For operating forces, such as ships and aviation
squadrons, workloads are based on each ship's or squadron's mission,
the capabilities needed to execute the mission, and the conditions
under which the mission is to be carried out. For shore-based
infrastructure forces, personnel requirements are based on the numbers
and types of personnel required to accomplish each activity's workload.
As we have reported, the Navy has had difficulty in past years
justifying its shore requirements because it has not evaluated
alternative combinations of people, materiel, facilities, and
organizational structures to ensure that the most cost-effective
combination of resources is used.[Footnote 17] The Navy is also
conducting discrete analyses to identify opportunities to reduce
military personnel requirements in support of projected end strength
reductions. By reducing end strength, the Navy aims to free up funds
for fleet modernization. For example, it initiated studies on providing
services, such as meteorological support, financial management,
religious ministries, and recruiting. To achieve the lower cost, the
Navy is examining alternatives to military manpower--for example, using
technology or hiring private-sector contractors instead of using
military personnel. Furthermore, these studies aim to identify ways to
eliminate redundant activities by consolidating activities that provide
similar services. Under a separate set of reviews, the Navy is
scrutinizing positions in selected career fields such as supply support
to determine whether these positions are military essential or, rather,
could be staffed with civilian employees.
* The Air Force's current process for determining the manpower it needs
is focused on the requirements for training objectives and for
operating and maintaining bases and weapons systems in peacetime.
However, the Air Force is in the process of overhauling its manpower
requirements process to determine the capabilities it needs for its
role as an expeditionary force able to respond rapidly to worldwide
contingencies. The Air Force plans to continue using the same
methodological techniques (e.g., time studies, work sampling, computer
simulation, and aircrew ratios) to quantify its personnel requirements,
but the new process will include both the infrastructure personnel and
the warfighting force needed to support expeditionary missions. The Air
Force expects to implement its new capabilities-based approach by
fiscal year 2008.
* The Marine Corps uses modeling, simulations, spreadsheet analysis,
and other analytic tools to identify gaps in its capabilities to
perform its missions, and then identifies the personnel and skills
needed to provide the capabilities based largely on the professional
judgment of manpower experts and subject matter experts. The results
are summarized in a manpower document, updated as needed, which is used
to allocate positions and personnel to meet mission priorities. The
Marine Corps' analyses for fiscal year 2004 indicated that to execute
its assigned missions the Corps needs about 9,600 more personnel than
it has on hand. The 2005 National Defense Authorization Act authorized
the Marine Corps to increase its end strength by 3,000 personnel to
178,000 in 2005 and to increase by an additional 6,000 personnel
between fiscal year 2005 and 2009.
Although the security environment has changed since 2001, OSD has not
conducted a systematic review of the services' analyses and allocation
of personnel. Consequently, OSD cannot ensure that the end strength
levels established in its strategic and fiscal guidance reflect the
numbers of personnel needed to execute the defense strategy. Further,
it cannot ensure that it has a sufficient basis for understanding the
risks associated with different levels of active military personnel.
While too many active personnel could be inefficient and costly, having
too few could result in other negative consequences, such as inability
to provide the capabilities that the military forces need to deter and
defeat adversaries. If OSD had a data-driven rationale to support its
funding requests for specific end strength levels, it could provide
congressional decision makers more complete information on how active
duty personnel requirements are linked to the budget, the force
structure, and the defense strategy.
OSD Does Not Have Comprehensive Plans to Manage Near-and Long-Term
Initiatives to Increase the Proportion of Active Personnel in
Warfighting Positions:
OSD hopes to avert the need to increase active personnel levels by
making more efficient use of the current active military personnel
within each service, although it does not have a comprehensive plan for
how it will accomplish this and progress in implementing initiatives
designed to make more efficient use of active military is lagging
behind goals. Specifically, OSD has not developed a comprehensive plan
for managing the initiatives because the officials assigned this
responsibility have competing demands on their time and resources and
have not made this a priority. Sustained leadership and a plan for
implementing initiatives and measuring progress can help decision
makers determine if initiatives are achieving their desired results. In
addition, although OSD has identified two near-term initiatives--
military-to-civilian conversion and retraining for high-demand skills-
-current data indicate that the initiatives are not meeting their
quantitative goals or prescribed time frames because funding has not
been identified and time frames have not taken into account hiring and
training factors. OSD has approved quantitative goals and time frames
for the near-term initiatives, and the services are taking steps to
implement them, but OSD does not have an implementation plan that
assigns responsibility for ensuring that the initiatives are
implemented, identifies resources needed, monitors progress, and
evaluates their results. In addition to the near-term goals, OSD has
identified some long-term initiatives to reduce the need for active
personnel, such as using technology more extensively, although these
initiatives are not fully developed, and it hopes to identify
additional ways to use active personnel more efficiently. However,
without a comprehensive plan to manage implementation of its
initiatives and assess their results, OSD may be unable to determine
whether the initiatives have the desired effect of providing more
military personnel for warfighting duties, thus averting the need for
more active personnel. Consequently, OSD may not be able to track the
progress of these initiatives and keep Congress informed on the results
of its initiatives to use active military personnel more efficiently.
Responsibilities for Managing and Overseeing Initiatives Have Not Been
Clearly Defined:
According to officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's
Under Secretaries for Policy and for Personnel and Readiness, in summer
2003, the Secretary of Defense directed the Deputy Under Secretary of
Defense for Policy to develop a plan for managing initiatives that
might either directly or indirectly use the active force more
efficiently. However, no personnel were assigned responsibility for
carrying out the Secretary's tasking, in part because of competing
demands on staff time, such as developing DOD's Strategic Planning
Guidance. According to a senior official in the Policy office, OSD and
service officials met soon after the Secretary directed more efficient
use of the force to discuss how to provide oversight of the
initiatives. However, other work demands took priority, and they did
not continue the meetings. In spring 2004, oversight responsibilities
for the initiatives were transferred to the Office of the Under
Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, according to an
official in the Office of Policy. Even after the transfer, OSD
officials could not identify an individual with responsibility for
creating and implementing a plan to organize, monitor, and evaluate the
initiatives. In response to an inquiry by the Secretary of Defense, in
fall 2004 an official in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
for Personnel and Readiness told us that he had begun developing ways
to determine the results of the services' efforts to achieve workforce
efficiencies. However, at the time of our review, the methodology for
the analysis was still being developed.
Management principles embraced in the Government Performance and
Results Act of 1993[Footnote 18] provide agencies a framework for
implementing and managing programs. One principle is the need to
describe detailed implementation actions as well as measurements and
indicators of performance (i.e., a performance plan). Critical elements
of such a plan include identifying resources and developing mechanisms
to measure outcomes and means to compare program results to performance
goals. In addition, sustained leadership in managing this plan is
needed to ensure that program objectives are implemented in accordance
with the plan, compare program results to performance goals, and take
corrective actions as needed.
Without oversight of the services' implementation of initiatives to
make more efficient use of military personnel, DOD cannot be sure that
changes are having the desired effect. For example, the department
recently reported that it had completed its initiative to reduce and
maintain the numbers of active personnel assigned to headquarters units
by 15 percent from their 1999 levels. Although the objective of the
initiative was to increase the numbers of military personnel assigned
to warfighting duties, DOD did not collect data on how the military
positions that had been assigned to headquarters units were assigned
after the reductions. Therefore, DOD could not demonstrate whether
headquarters staff reductions directly resulted in more active military
personnel being available for the services' warfighting duties and
could not assess the magnitude of any changes.
Military-to-Civilian Position Conversion and Active and Reserve
Component Rebalancing Initiatives Are Not Meeting Expected Goals or
Time Frames:
While the services are in the process of implementing OSD's initiatives
to use active personnel more efficiently in the near term, such as
converting military positions to civilian or contractor performance and
rebalancing the active and reserve component skills, the initiatives
are not meeting planned goals and time frames and are not having the
desired results. The services have made some progress in converting
positions to civilians or contractors and reassigning positions to
high-demand skills, but most of the services did not meet their
quantitative goals or time frames for 2004[Footnote 19] because of
funding issues and delays in recruiting, hiring, contracting, and
training personnel. Without a plan for overseeing the services'
implementation of the initiatives, including assigning responsibility
and collecting data, OSD cannot assess progress toward meeting the
goals of moving military positions to the operating forces and take
corrective action, if needed.
Converting Military Positions to Civilian or Contractor Performance Is
Not Meeting Quantitative Goals within Planned Time Frames:
Some military personnel are assigned to activities that are commercial
in nature and could, theoretically, be performed by a DOD civilian or
by a contractor. For example, many activities that DOD organizations
must accomplish, such as administrative, personnel, and infrastructure
support, do not require military training. However, estimates of the
numbers of military personnel occupying such positions who could be
reassigned to warfighting positions vary widely. For example, senior
OSD officials recently stated that about 300,000 military personnel are
performing functions that civilians could perform or that could be
contracted out to a commercial source. However, OSD and some service
officials acknowledged this estimate was based on a 1997 study that
used a methodology, that overstated the actual number of military
personnel in positions suitable for civilian or contractor performance.
Since that time, a comprehensive review of commercial-type
positions[Footnote 20] completed in 2003 identified only about 44,000
military positions as suitable for conversion to civilian or contractor
positions.
In December 2003, OSD directed the services to convert about 20,070
military positions to civilian or private-sector contractor positions
by the end of fiscal year 2005--10,000 in fiscal year 2004 and 10,070
in fiscal year 2005. OSD directed the services to fund the conversion
costs through offsets from other programs, such as base operations
support. Several service officials told us that OSD did not provide
them with information on how the conversion goals were developed. They
also explained that since the fiscal year goals were not realistic,
given that the fiscal year was already under way, taking planned
funding from other programs could be disruptive. Moreover, some service
officials indicated that the amount of time needed to hire civilians or
award contracts was a further impediment to meeting the OSD goals.
Therefore, the services developed alternative goals to convert about
2,900 positions by the end of fiscal year 2004. As figure 1 shows, at
the end of fiscal year 2004, the service officials told us that they
had converted about 3,400 positions,[Footnote 21] which was about 34
percent of OSD's original goal of 10,000 positions. Although the
services have a goal to convert about 15,900 positions in fiscal year
2005, several service officials believe that identifying funding and
the time needed to hire civilians or award contracts may impede their
ability to fully implement their goals.
Fiscal Year 2004:
Figure 1: Comparison of OSD's and the Services' Plans for Military-to-
Civilian Conversions for Fiscal Years 2004 and 2005 and the Number of
Conv:
[See PDF for image]
Note: With the exception of the Navy and the Marine Corps, we were
unable to determine the reliability of the fiscal year 2004 data for
the numbers of completed positions related to military-to-civilian
conversions. Further information on our data reliability assessment
appears in appendix I.
[A] The Army converted about 35 active military positions in fiscal
year 2004. This figure does not include changes to the reserve
components.
[End of figure]
In fiscal year 2004, several of the services had to pay for the
civilian or contractor replacements for military personnel who will
continue to serve in different positions through offsets from other
programs. According to some service officials, lack of additional
funding limited the number of conversions that could be made in 2004.
For example, in fiscal year 2004, the Army converted only about 35
military positions because, according to Army officials, paying for
more positions would have created problems in other program areas.
Neither OSD nor the services had fully evaluated the costs of proposed
military-to-civilian position conversions. OSD plans to provide $416
million in fiscal year 2005 to fund some conversions, but because the
services have not identified specific positions to be converted,
whether this amount will fully fund all the planned conversions is not
known.
In addition, several service officials expressed concern that hiring
civilians or contractors with the necessary skills to fill the
positions vacated by military personnel may exceed planned time frames.
For example, Navy officials explained that the process of hiring
civilians who are qualified to replace 1,772 military personnel with
medical skills could extend beyond the planned date of fiscal year
2005. To complete these conversions, the Navy will have to compete with
the job markets in local economies to recruit individuals with the
appropriate medical specialties in varied geographical areas. In
addition, it will have to manage the planned rotation dates and service
obligation commitments of the military servicemembers currently in the
target positions.
The services plan to use varying processes that could result in the
conversion of positions currently performed by active military
personnel. The Air Force and the Marine Corps plan to use the
competitive sourcing process to determine whether it would be more
cost-efficient to perform activities within DOD such as aircraft
maintenance or, alternatively, to contract with the private sector. The
Army does not plan to use this process to compete active military
positions for potential private-sector contracts, Army officials told
us, because the process may take longer than 2 years to
complete.[Footnote 22] Rather, the Army plans to hire government
civilians to fill positions vacated by military personnel.
Although OSD does not have a comprehensive plan to implement, monitor,
and evaluate its efficiency initiatives as a whole, in April 2004, the
Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness introduced a
process for managing conversions of military positions to civilian or
contractor positions. Specifically, this process is designed to (1)
measure the services' progress in achieving military-to-civilian
conversion goals, (2) determine which skill sets will receive
additional military positions subsequent to conversions, and (3)
identify and track the number of civilian or contractor positions added
as a result of conversions. According to OSD and some service
officials, this oversight mechanism will lend greater transparency to
the services' military-to-civilian conversion efforts and will provide
the services an incentive to accelerate their own conversion efforts.
It was too early to evaluate the process' performance because the
systems that will be used to measure progress or account for
conversions either were being developed or required modifications to
capture new data.
Goals for Reassigning Servicemembers to High-Demand Skills May Not Be
Achievable within Planned Time Frames because of Limited Training
Availability:
Another near-term initiative to make the best use of active military
personnel focuses on shifting positions in low-demand skills, such as
artillery, to high-demand skills, such as military police, both within
the active and reserve components and between them. That would include
shifting some functions predominately concentrated in the reserve
component, such as civil affairs, to the active component. Through this
initiative, DOD plans to increase the availability of high-demand
skills overall and to meet short-notice demands. In February 2004,
service officials reported to OSD that they could reassign about 22,900
active duty military positions[Footnote 23] to skills in high demand--
about 13,900 positions and 9,000 positions in fiscal years 2004 and
2005, respectively--and OSD approved the services' estimates. However,
in planning to implement rebalancing activities, a senior OSD official
told us service officials determined that the initial estimates would
be difficult to execute in the near term due in part to the emerging
operational requirements as a result of the global war on terrorism.
Therefore, as figure 2 shows, the services' plans for reassigning
active personnel were lowered. For example, the services planned to
reassign about 5,900 positions in fiscal year 2004--about 42 percent of
the 13,900 positions originally estimated. In fiscal year 2005, the
Army, the Air Force, and the Navy plan to reassign skills for about
8,940 military positions--about 60 fewer positions than the original
estimate of about 9,000. In fiscal year 2004, the Marine Corps did not
plan to change the mix of skills for any active military personnel, and
it has not yet completed plans for fiscal year 2005 according to a
Marine Corps official.
Figure 2: Comparison of OSD's and the Services' Plans to Reassign
Active Military Positions to High-Demand Skills and the Number of
Positions Reassigned in Fiscal Year 2004:
[See PDF for image]
Note: With the exception of the Navy, we were unable to determine the
reliability of the fiscal year 2004 data for the numbers of completed
positions related to rebalancing of the active and reserve components.
Further information on our data reliability assessment appears in
appendix I.
[A] In fiscal year 2004, the Marine Corps did not change the mix of
skills for active military personnel and in fiscal year 2005, the
Marine Corps has not yet completed its plans.
[End of figure]
Even if the services could identify positions to meet targets for
rebalancing skills, DOD could still encounter delays in providing
active personnel with high-demand skills quickly because, according to
some service officials, training facilities, courses, and instructors
may limit the numbers of personnel who can be retrained in the short
term. Further, training servicemembers for some specialized skills
requires time for them to acquire proficiency. For example, Army and
Marine Corps officials told us that training military personnel for
skills such as satellite imagery analysis might take 1 to 2 years.
Long-Term Initiatives Do Not Have Well-Defined Implementation Plans:
Although DOD has begun to implement its two major initiatives, it had
not developed clear implementation plans for initiatives, which have
longer-term or less direct effects on active military personnel who may
be needed for warfighting duties. While some of the long-term
initiatives focus on specific problems and issues, such as relying more
on volunteers, others are concepts the department would like to explore
more fully over time, such as greater use of varied technologies.
Senior OSD officials acknowledged that these initiatives are not yet
completely developed and do not yet have detailed implementation plans
that identify time frames, resources, and measures of success.
Moreover, some long-term initiatives may take years to implement,
according to these officials. Consequently, it may take years before
OSD is in a position to determine whether these long-term initiatives
will yield the expected increases of active duty military personnel for
warfighting duties. For example, senior OSD officials identified global
reachback, other new technologies, and volunteerism as initiatives the
department is exploring, as described in table 3.
Table 2: Long-Term Initiatives for Achieving Greater Efficiencies in
the Active Duty Force:
Initiative: Global reach back;
Description:
* This initiative would enable servicemembers to provide essential
support and skills, such as intelligence, by connecting electronically
to sites in the United States and worldwide locations;
* This capability could reduce both the number of forces deployed and
the rotation base needed to maintain the troops deployed in theater;
* DOD completed a study on reachback best practices in summer 2004.
Initiative: Technology;
Description:
* This initiative involves investing in new technologies, such as
remote sensing devices and unmanned air vehicles, which are intended to
reduce the required numbers of military personnel;
* DOD plans to assess new technology on a continuing basis.
Initiative: Volunteerism;
Description:
* This initiative involves deploying civilians, private contractors, or
reserve personnel who have critical skills in high demand, such as
linguists and engineers, who would volunteer for short periods of time
and in response to specific emergencies;
* DOD plans to develop policies and legislative proposals for Congress.
Source: GAO analysis of DOD data.
[End of table]
The services targeted some technologies that they can use to reduce the
need for support personnel in the near term, although these may not be
implemented as planned because technologies are supplied first to
operational needs. For example, to reduce its reliance on about 3,000
Army National Guard and Reserve personnel who provide security-related
functions at Air Force bases, the Air Force planned to use ground
surveillance radars and thermal imagers to detect intruders and improve
surveillance in fiscal year 2004. However, the Air Force has not yet
outfitted its domestic military bases with this equipment because it
was needed for use on Army bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result,
the Air Force must continue to rely on servicemembers for security
until at least fiscal year 2006, when it plans to buy additional
equipment. For the long term, Navy officials anticipate that
acquisition of new technology related to transformation could reduce
the manpower it needs. For example, the Navy expects the number of
military personnel it will need to operate and support its new DD(X)
destroyer will be smaller than the number needed to operate destroyers
currently in use.[Footnote 24] However, Navy officials have not yet
determined the exact crew size for the new destroyers.
Conclusions:
The changing security environment and high pace of operations resulting
from the global war on terrorism have led to significant debate about
whether there are a sufficient number of active military servicemembers
to carry out ongoing and potential future military operations. Although
DOD defined a new defense strategy that broadens the range of
capabilities that may be needed at home and around the world, OSD has
not undertaken a systematic, data-based analysis of how the changed
strategy is linked to personnel levels, so it cannot demonstrate how
the current number of active personnel supports the department's
ability to execute the strategy within acceptable levels of risk. While
personnel costs compete with costs of other priorities, without data-
driven analyses of the forces--including active and reserve personnel-
-and how they are linked to the strategy, DOD is limited in its ability
to determine how best to invest its limited resources over the near and
long term between the competing priorities of personnel costs and other
needs. The department will also continue to face challenges in
achieving consensus with Congress on active duty end strength levels,
in light of the demands imposed by ongoing operations and the
significant changes in the security environment, until it can better
demonstrate the basis for its budget requests.
Although DOD has taken several positive steps to achieve its goal of
using active military personnel more efficiently, its initiatives may
lose momentum without additional management attention. Further, DOD
cannot assess whether the initiatives are having the desired effect of
providing more active personnel to warfighting positions because it has
not developed an implementation plan to coordinate and oversee the
initiatives put forward as contributing to more efficient use of active
forces. Until DOD develops a plan that assigns responsibilities,
clarifies time frames, identifies resources, and sets out performance
metrics, DOD will not be able to assess the progress of the initiatives
and take corrective action, if necessary. Moreover, in the absence of
specific monitoring and reporting, DOD will not be able to inform
Congress on the extent to which its efficiency initiatives are enabling
it to meet emerging needs and better manage the high pace of operations
that U.S. active forces are currently experiencing.
Recommendations for Executive Action:
To facilitate DOD's and congressional decision making on active
military personnel levels and to help DOD achieve its goals for
assigning a greater proportion of active military personnel to
positions in the operating force, we recommend that the Secretary of
Defense take the following two actions:
* Conduct a review of active military personnel requirements as part of
the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review. This review should include a
detailed analysis of how the services currently allocate active
military forces to key missions required by the defense strategy and
should examine the need for changes in overall personnel levels and in
the allocation of personnel in response to new missions and changes in
the defense strategy. The Secretary of Defense should summarize and
include in its Quadrennial Defense Review report to Congress DOD's
conclusions about appropriate personnel levels for each of the services
and describe the key assumptions guiding DOD's analysis, the
methodology used to evaluate requirements, and how the risks associated
with various alternative personnel force levels were evaluated.
* Develop a detailed plan to manage implementation of DOD's initiatives
to use the force more efficiently. Such a plan should establish
implementation objectives and time frames, assign responsibility,
identify resources, and develop performance measures to enable DOD to
evaluate the results of the initiatives in allocating a greater
proportion of the active force to warfighting positions.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
The Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Program Integration) provided
written comments on a draft of this report. The department generally
agreed with our recommendations and cited actions it is taking to
implement them. The department's comments are reprinted in their
entirety in appendix II. In addition, the department provided technical
comments, which we incorporated as appropriate.
The department agreed with our recommendation that the Secretary of
Defense conduct an OSD-led, comprehensive assessment of the manning and
balancing the force needed to execute the defense strategy as part of
the next quadrennial review. In its comments, the department said that
it intends to meet the requirements that Congress set forth in
mandating the quadrennial review, including assessing the total force
structure needed to implement the defense strategy. Further, the
department agreed with our recommendation to report to Congress its
conclusions about appropriate personnel levels for each of the services
and describe the key assumptions guiding its analysis, the methodology
used to evaluate the requirements, and how the risks associated with
various alternative personnel force levels were evaluated. We believe
that the department's approach will satisfy the intent of our
recommendation if, in the course of the quadrennial review, the manning
and balancing of active and reserve forces are specifically analyzed
using appropriate methodologies, assumptions, and evaluative
techniques. Providing this information to Congress will assist in its
oversight of defense programs by providing a sound basis for decision
making on the size of the active and reserve forces and the costs and
risks associated with various alternatives.
The department also agreed with our recommendation to develop a
detailed plan to manage implementation of its initiatives to use the
force more efficiently and such a plan should establish implementation
objectives and time frames, assign responsibility, identify resources,
and develop performance measures to use the force more efficiently. In
its comments, the department noted that it has put in place some
mechanisms to capture and track activities that enable it to use the
force more efficiently. For example, it is now tracking the services'
military-to-civilian conversions and documenting the results in its
budget exhibits. The department also noted that it has established a
forum for OSD and service officials to discuss and track the services'
initiatives to reduce stress on the force. We believe that the
department's approach represents positive steps. However, we believe
that OSD should consider taking additional actions to clearly assign
responsibility and develop comprehensive plans for implementing
initiatives and measuring their progress. Critical elements of such
plans would include identifying resources and developing mechanisms to
measure outcomes and means to compare program results to performance
goals. By embracing these management principles, OSD and service
officials can help decision makers determine if initiatives are
achieving their desired results and take corrective actions as needed.
We are sending copies of this report to other appropriate congressional
committees and the Secretary of Defense. We will also make copies
available to other interested parties upon request. In addition, the
report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web site at http://
www.gao.gov.
If you have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202)
512-4402. Major contributors to this report at listed in appendix III.
Signed by:
Janet A. St. Laurent:
Director, Defense Capabilities and Management:
List of Committees:
The Honorable Saxby Chambliss:
The Honorable Ben Nelson:
Committee on Armed Services:
United States Senate:
The Honorable John M. McHugh:
The Honorable Victor F. Snyder:
Committee on Armed Services:
House of Representatives:
[End of section]
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:
To assess the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Defense
(OSD) has conducted a data-based analysis of active military personnel
needed to implement the national defense strategy, we identified and
examined relevant laws, presidential documents, and the Department of
Defense (DOD) guidance, reports, and analyses related to active
military personnel and the defense strategy. These documents included
the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, the defense strategy issued
as part of the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, the National
Military Strategy of the United States of America 2004, the Defense
Manpower Requirements Report Fiscal Year 2005, the Secretary of
Defense's Annual Report to the President and the Congress for 2003, and
the Department of Defense Performance and Accountability Report Fiscal
Year 2004. Although the total force includes active military personnel
and National Guard and reserve forces, our review focused on active
military personnel because Congress considered and passed legislation
in 2004 to increase their numbers. We examined the services' guidance
on processes for determining personnel requirements for the total force
to identify the methodologies, time frames, and organizations involved
in these processes. We also obtained and analyzed the results of the
services' requirements processes and studies, and we discussed their
status with officials responsible for managing these efforts at DOD
organizations. These organizations included, but are not limited to,
the Army's Offices of the Deputy Chiefs of Staff for Personnel and for
Operations and Plans, and the Army's Programs Analysis and Evaluation
Directorate; the U.S. Army Forces Command; the Air Force's Deputy
Chiefs of Staff for Personnel and for Plans and Programs; the Air Force
Manpower Agency; the Air Force Personnel Center; the Navy's Deputy
Chief of Naval Operation for Manpower and Personnel; the Marine Corps
Manpower and Reserve Affairs; and the Marine Corps Combat Development
Command.
Because it did not fall within the scope of our review, we did not
assess the services' methodologies or validate the results of their
requirements analyses. We also examined guidance on the services'
processes for allocating manpower resources. We identified criteria for
examining workforce levels through our products on strategic human
capital management and consulting with our staff with expertise in this
area. Testimonial evidence was obtained from officials assigned to (1)
the Offices of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the Under
Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and the Under
Secretary of Defense for Comptroller; (2) the Office of Program
Analysis and Evaluation; and (3) the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In
addition, we analyzed transcripts of public briefings and congressional
testimony presented by OSD officials. We reviewed DOD's fiscal year
2005 Defense Manpower Requirements Report and DOD's fiscal years 2003
and 2004 Performance and Accountability Reports to determine the manner
and extent to which OSD evaluates end strength in fulfilling statutory
reporting requirements pertaining to force management. We reviewed our
prior work on the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review to ascertain whether
this process included an explicit assessment of active duty personnel.
To gain an independent perspective on the OSD role in analyzing the
number of active military personnel needed to implement the national
defense strategy, we interviewed a former Assistant Secretary of
Defense.
To assess the extent to which OSD has a plan to implement initiatives
to make more efficient use of active military personnel and evaluate
their results, we analyzed available internal DOD documentation such as
briefings, memoranda, and reports that identified DOD's plans and time
frames. We obtained, analyzed, and compared OSD's and the services'
fiscal year 2004 and 2005 targets to ascertain the differences. Also,
we compared the services' fiscal year 2004 results with the services'
fiscal year 2004 plans. To understand the reasons for any differences,
we discussed their status and implications with officials responsible
for managing these efforts at DOD organizations including, but not
limited to, the Offices of the Under Secretaries of Defense for Policy,
for Personnel and Readiness, and for Comptroller; the Army's Offices of
the Deputy Chiefs of Staff for Personnel and for Operations and Plans;
the U.S. Army Forces Command; the Air Force's Deputy Chiefs of Staff
for Personnel; the Navy's Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower
and Personnel; and the Marine Corps' Combat Development Command. We
limited our review to the major initiatives that were identified by
these officials and emphasized by the Secretary of Defense in his
testimony[Footnote 25] because DOD officials did not have a
comprehensive document that listed or described all the initiatives. We
held further discussions with service officials and obtained and
analyzed written responses to our questions to (1) identify the actions
that the services took or will take in fiscal years 2004 and 2005 to
implement the initiatives and (2) fully understand the challenges that
the services may face with implementation. Also, we reviewed DOD's
fiscal year 2005 budget request to assess DOD's expected costs for
military-to-civilian conversions. To identify the extent to which DOD
had implemented mandated reductions in major headquarters staff, we
reviewed the governing directives and analyzed DOD's draft budget
exhibits for fiscal year 2004, which contained data on actual
reductions for the services and other defense organizations for fiscal
year 2003 and estimated reductions for fiscal years 2004 and 2005. We
also interviewed an OSD official and obtained data from the services to
identify whether they collected data on the extent to which military
personnel affected by headquarters reductions were reassigned to
warfighting forces. Moreover, we conducted interviews with officials
from the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, the
Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps and reviewed DOD
guidance to understand DOD's process for managing conversions of
military positions to civilian or contractor positions. Further, we
reviewed our prior audit work related to the conversion of military
positions to civilian or contactor positions, the competitive sourcing
process, and headquarters reductions to enhance our understanding of
DOD's ongoing efforts to achieve efficiencies. Our work was conducted
in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area; Atlanta, Georgia; and San
Antonio, Texas.
We performed our work from August 2003 through January 2005 in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards and
determined that data, other than those used for the efficiency
initiatives, were sufficiently reliable to answer our objectives. We
interviewed data sources about how they ensure their own data accuracy,
and we reviewed their data collection methods, standard operating
procedures, and other internal control measures. Concerning the fiscal
year 2004 data for the military-to-civilian conversions and rebalancing
initiatives, we determined that the Navy's and the Marine Corps' data
were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our objectives. We
considered the Army's and the Air Force's military-to-civilian
conversion and rebalancing skills data for fiscal year 2004 to be of
undetermined reliability because the two services did not respond to
our requests to provide documentation for the controls they use to
ensure the accuracy of their data. Even though those services'
officials presented the fiscal year 2004 data as their official
numbers, we cannot attest to their reliability. However, in the context
in which the data were presented, we determined the usage to be
appropriate because the fiscal year 2004 data did not constitute the
sole support for our findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
Further, if the fiscal year 2004 results were revised, our conclusions
would remain unchanged.
[End of section]
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Defense:
PERSONNEL AND READINESS:
OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE:
4000 DEFENSE PENTAGON:
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20301-4000:
JAN 12 2005:
Ms. Janet A. St. Laurent:
Director, Defense Capabilities and Management:
U.S. Government Accountability Office:
441 G Street, N.W.:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Ms. St. Laurent:
This is the Department of Defense (DoD) response to the GAO draft
report, "MILITARY PERSONNEL: DoD Needs to Conduct a Data-Driven
Analysis of Active Military Personnel Levels Required to Implement the
Defense Strategy," GAO Code 350333/GAO-05-200, dated December 17, 2004.
The Department generally concurs with the report. Assessing the total
force structure needed to implement the Defense strategy is an inherent
part the Quadrennial Defense Review Report and we fully intend to meet
those objectives. Regarding the Departments' efforts to reduce stress
on the force, we have several mechanisms in place to monitor and
document the outstanding work the Services are doing to become more
effective and efficient.
Enclosed are our comments in response to your recommendations and also
included are some technical review comments. The DoD appreciates the
opportunity to comment on the draft report.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Jeanne B. Fites:
Deputy Under Secretary of Defense:
Program Integration:
Enclosure As stated:
GAO DRAFT REPORT - DATED DECEMBER 17, 2004 GAO CODE 350333/GAO-05-200:
"MILITARY PERSONNEL: DoD Needs to Conduct a Data-Driven Analysis of
Active Military Personnel Levels Required to Implement the Defense
Strategy"
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COMMENTS TO THE RECOMMENDATIONS:
RECOMMENDATION 1: The GAO recommended that the Secretary of Defense
conduct a review of active military personnel requirements as part of
the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). This review should include a
detailed analysis of how the Services currently allocate active
military forces to key missions required by the Defense strategy and
should examine the need for changes in overall personnel levels and in
the allocation of personnel in response to new missions and changes in
the Defense strategy. (Page 31/GAO Draft Report):
DOD RESPONSE: DoD concurs. Legislation requires the Secretary of
Defense to conduct a comprehensive examination of Defense strategy
every four years. Section, 118 (b) (2) of Title 10, United States Code,
requires that the QDR "define sufficient force structure, force
modernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of
the defense program of the United States associated with that national
defense strategy that would be required to execute successfully the
full range of missions called for in that national defense strategy;
and (3) to identify (A) the budget plan that would be required to
provide sufficient resources to execute successfully the full range of
missions called for in that national defense strategy at a low-to-
moderate level of risk, and (B) any additional resources (beyond those
programmed in the current future-years defense program) required to
achieve such a level of risk."
We are initiating the 2005 review recognizing that we are a nation at
war. DoD fully intends to meet the requirements set forth for the QDR
and to report its assessment as required in Title 10. The objective of
QDR is to determine the right strategy and establish Defense programs
for the next 20 years. As required by the legislation, manning and
balancing the force for the 21st century will be addressed. As the
guidance, terms of reference, and work plans for QDR 2005 are developed
analysis and data issues will be addressed. It is important to note
that the review will include more than just the active force, it will
also include the Reserves. Any analysis completed must account for the
Total Force.
RECOMMENDATION 2: The GAO recommended that the Secretary of Defense
should summarize and include in its Quadrennial Defense Review report
to Congress DoD's conclusions about appropriate personnel levels for
each of the Services and describe the key assumptions guiding DoD's
analysis, the methodology used to evaluate requirements, and how the
risks associated with various alternative personnel force levels were
evaluated.
(Page 31/GAO Draft Report):
DOD RESPONSE: DoD concurs. Comments same as above:
RECOMMENDATION 3: The GAO recommended that the Secretary of Defense
develop a detailed plan to manage implementation of DoD's initiatives
to use the force more efficiently. Such a plan should establish
implementation objectives and time frames, assign responsibility,
identify resources, and develop performance measures to enable DoD to
evaluate the results of the initiatives in allocating a greater
proportion of the active force to warftghting positions. (Page 31 & 32/
GAO Draft Report):
DOD RESPONSE: DoD concurs. The effective implementation of actions to
reduce the stress on the Force is paramount to mission success. DoD has
put in place mechanisms to capture and track these activities. For
example, we track through an OSD database, the execution of the
Military/Civilian conversions for the Services and provide
documentation of those efforts as part of the budget exhibits.
Additionally, we have two ongoing Integrated Process Teams (IPTs) with
Service representation. These IPTs provide a forum for the OSD and
Service staffs to discuss, frame and accurately capture Service
initiatives to reduce stress.
The following is GAO's comment on the department's letter dated January
12, 2005.
GAO Comment:
1. The department's response correlates to the second part of our first
recommendation.
[End of section]
Appendix III: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:
GAO Contacts:
Janet St. Laurent, (202) 512-4402:
Margaret G. Morgan, (202) 512-8975:
Acknowledgments:
In addition to the persons named above, Deborah Colantonio, Susan K.
Woodward, Paul Rades, Leland Cogliani, Michelle Munn, Margaret Best,
Cheryl Weissman, Kenneth E. Patton, John G. Smale Jr., and Jennifer R.
Popovic also made major contributions to this report.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Throughout this report, the term "DOD" refers to OSD and the
services.
[2] GAO, A Model of Strategic Human Capital Management, GAO-02-373SP
(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 15, 2002).
[3] 10 U.S.C. §118.
[4] 10 U.S.C. § 115(e).
[5] 10 U.S.C. § 123a(a).
[6] Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist
Attacks, Pres. Proc. No. 7,463, 66 Fed. Reg. 48, 199 (Sept. 14, 2001);
Exec. Order No. 13,223, Ordering the Ready Reserve of the Armed Forces
to Active Duty and Delegating Certain Authorities to the Secretary of
Defense and the Secretary of Transportation, 66 Fed. Reg. 48,201 (Sept.
14, 2001).
[7] Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year
2005, Pub. L. No. 108-375, § 401 (2004).
[8] GAO-02-373SP.
[9] Pub. L. No. 106-65, § 901(a), codified at 10 U.S.C. §118.
[10] Force structure represents the numbers, size, and composition of
the units that comprise U.S. forces, for example, ships or air wings.
[11] Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report
(Washington, D.C., Sept. 30, 2001).
[12] Department of Defense, Performance and Accountability Report
Fiscal Year 2003 (Washington, D.C., Dec. 23, 2003).
[13] Department of Defense, Performance and Accountability Report
Fiscal Year 2003 (Washington, D.C., Dec. 23, 2003).
[14] Stop loss authority is provided by 10 U.S.C. §12305.
[15] Department of Defense, Performance and Accountability Report
Fiscal Year 2004 (Washington, D.C., Nov. 15, 2004). The department's
data were based on results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2004;
we report the final fiscal year 2004 results in table 1.
[16] Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Requirements Report Fiscal
Year 2005 (Washington, D.C., Mar. 2004).
[17] GAO, Force Structure: Streamlining Plans Could Enable Navy to
Reduce Personnel Below Fiscal Year 1999 Goal, GAO/NSIAD-97-90
(Washington, D.C.: Apr. 18, 1997).
[18] Pub. L. No. 103-62.
[19] With the exception of the Navy and the Marine Corps, we were
unable to determine the reliability of the fiscal year 2004 data for
the numbers of completed positions related to military-to-civilian
conversions and rebalancing of the active and reserve components.
Further information on our data reliability assessment appears in
appendix I.
[20] DOD conducts annual reviews of governmental positions to satisfy
the reporting requirements of the Federal Activities Inventory Reform
Act of 1998, Pub. L. No. 105-270.
[21] We did not include in this total about 4,100 security positions
originally filled by Army National Guard personnel that the Army
replaced with contractor personnel because this action did not result
in an increase of active military personnel available for warfighting
duties.
[22] As we reported, DOD data indicated that conducting competitive
sourcing studies takes an average of 20 to 35 months to complete. See
GAO, Defense Management: DOD Faces Challenges Implementing Its Core
Competency Approach and A-76 Competitions, GAO-03-818 (Washington,
D.C.: July 15, 2003).
[23] Reassigning active military personnel from a position in a low-
demand skill to a position in a high-demand skill is commonly referred
to as military-to-military conversions. The services' targets approved
by OSD represent military-to-military conversions. They do not include
converting military positions to civilian or contractor performance or
applying new technologies that may reduce the need for military
positions.
[24] GAO, Military Personnel: Navy Actions Needed to Optimize Ship Crew
Size and Reduce Total Ownership Costs, GAO-03-520 (Washington, D.C.:
June 9, 2003).
[25] Statement of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld before
the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Feb. 4, 2004.
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