The Army and Marine Corps need to take action to improve the planning and coordination of language and culture training, GAO has said.
It said the Army and Marine Corps developed service-specific language and culture strategies, but did not include some key elements to guide their training approaches and investments, and that DoD-wide efforts to establish a planning process that could better align service training approaches are incomplete.
While the Army and Marine Corps have developed broad goals and objectives within their strategies and identified some training programs and activities tied to these goals, the services did not always identify priorities and the investments needed to implement the training or a set of results-oriented performance metrics, according to GAO-11-456.
It said the services also did not complete underlying analyses and assign responsibilities for program performance prior to designing and implementing their strategies and associated training programs.
Training might entail a 4 to 6 hour online course, or a two-day classroom-based course on language and culture for troops deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan, and the report called on the Army and Marine Corps to assign responsibilities for program performance, and identify training investments and metrics.
It also recommended that DoD establish a defined planning process with internal mechanisms, such as procedures and milestones, to align training efforts, and that the U.S. Central Command establish a process to identify and synchronize training requirements.
