Pentagon-directed headquarters management reductions do not include all resources at the various military commands, which may affect DoD’s ability to achieve significant savings in headquarters operations as planned, GAO has said.
It noted that in 2013, DoD directed reductions to management headquarters resources in an effort to streamline the department’s management, but that the department did not have a clear or accurate accounting of the resources being devoted to management headquarters to use as a starting point to track reductions.
For example, GAO said that less than one quarter of the positions at the functional combatant commands are considered to be management headquarters even though many positions appear to be performing management headquarters functions such as planning, budgeting, and developing policies.
DoD partly agreed with a recommendation to reevaluate the decision to focus reductions on management headquarters to ensure meaningful savings. It also agreed with recommendations to set a clearly defined and consistently applied starting point as a baseline for the reductions, and to track reductions against the baselines in order to provide reliable accounting of savings and reporting to Congress.