Federal Manager's Daily Report

DoD is falling short of complying with a legal requirement to review the services and supplies provided by each defense agency and field activity (DAFA) to ensure that there is a continuing need for them and determine if the military services shouldn’t provide them instead, GAO has said.

DoD relies on pre-existing processes to fulfill the requirement, such as the annual budget process and the day-to-day management of the DAFAs, a report said. However, those processes do not specifically compare them against the military departments and DoD lacks clear policies for complying with the statutory requirements, it said.

“There is fragmentation and overlap within the DAFAs that provide human resources services to other defense agencies or organizations within DoD. At least six DoD organizations, including three DAFAs, perform human resources services for other parts of the department. One DAFA receives human resources services from all six organizations,” GAO said. “This has resulted in negative effects, such as inconsistent performance information regarding hiring, fragmented information technology systems, and inefficiencies associated with overhead costs.”

For example, it said, there are over 800 “fragmented information technology systems used to store and record training records across the department, which are costly to maintain.” A reform team is in place to address that problem but it suffers from a lack of comprehensive information and does not have time frames or deliverables for certain initiatives, it said. Other initiatives similarly lack established baselines and ongoing monitoring, it said.

The department concurred with recommendations including that it develop guidance to conduct and record its reviews of DAFAs; collect consistent performance information and comprehensive overhead cost information; establish time frames and deliverables for key reform efforts; and ensure routine and comprehensive monitoring and evaluation.