The Office of the Secretary of Defense needs to conduct
a “comprehensive, data-driven analysis” to determine
how many active personnel it needs to implement the
defense strategy, the Government Accountability Office
has said after reviewing how Defense manages the
increasing assignment of active personnel to
war-fighting duty.
OSD provides policy and budget guidance on active
personnel levels and has moved toward rebalancing
skills between active and reserve components, and it
explained that transformation initiatives have taken
priority over such comprehensive analysis — such as
converting military positions to civilian or
contractors, according to GAO-05-200.
However, the report said the conversion initiative
was 66 percent behind schedule for fiscal 2004, and
that evaluating the results of initiatives with
“performance metrics” and data collection would enable
OSD measures its progress and accurately inform Congress.
According to the report, OSD monitors actual personnel
levels but does not “systematically” review active
personnel allocations to ensure they are linked to the
defense strategy, or to “provide required capabilities
within acceptable risk.”
By linking active personnel levels to strategy, OSD
“could more effectively demonstrate to Congress a sound
basis for the active personnel levels it requests,” said GAO.
It said Defense could systematically reevaluate the
personnel it needs for the defense strategy during an
upcoming 2005 quadrennial review, and begin to develop a
plan to implement near and long term initiatives that
“identifies resources, and provides for evaluation of
progress toward objectives.”
