Section 554 of the 2021 defense spending bill is titled: “Inspector General Oversight of Diversity and Inclusion in Department of Defense; Supremacist, Extremist, or Criminal Gang Activity in the Armed Forces." Image: Ivan Cholakov/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe individual services and the armed forces as a whole need to do a more thorough job of creating a central database with information about extremist activities and sexual harassment, according to a report issued this month by the Defense Department’s (DoD) inspector general.
The IG identified 19 such reports from the services that were published during fiscal year 2023, which began last Oct. 1 and ended Sept. 30, and recognized that each were used to update policies and provide necessary data about addressing proscribed activities and diversity issues.
The Army got a mention for creating an independent review commission on sexual assault, which will begin operations sometime in early fiscal 2024. Also mentioned is a revision to the service’s regulations regarding police operations, to include a “requirement to execute culturally responsive policing.”
The Navy’s creation of a model for fostering diversity, equity and inclusion was cited as a means of identifying areas that need improvement and fostering future initiatives.
The Air Force also published a model for addressing the issues in a myriad of ways, to include collaborations among academia as well as intra-service communities.
The IG report also mentioned the Pentagon’s creation of a working group that would “implement urgent steps and develop additional recommendations regarding the threat posed by extremist activities.” It cited the related meetings among the IG offices at the Defense Department level and with those of the individual branches, as well as the services’ law-enforcement agencies. The meetings resulted in development of plans to ensure that the DoD IG, law enforcement, commanders, civilian authorities and any other relevant parties be notified of incidents of prohibited activities.
The IG noted that the individual services “reported challenges in compiling and validating data,” largely because no single reporting system exists and coordination with the various agencies has been difficult.
The IG report hailed the military departments for standardizing and implementing their processes – with a word of advice.
“Until implementation of standardized processes occurs, the DoD will have inconsistent tracking of prohibited activities participation; problems identifying, collecting and reporting data from multiple decentralized systems; and difficulty validating the accuracy of reported data.”
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