DoD has not fully carried out a budget law instructing it to achieve savings in its federal employee and contracted workforces, GAO has said, nor has DoD put in place recommendations of a prior GAO report reaching the same conclusion.
GAO was examining DoD’s compliance with provisions in its fiscal 2013 budget to put in place a plan to reduce its workforce costs on both the federal employee and contractor sides over 2012-2017 by as much as the expected reduction in military personnel costs over that time, which comes to 6.4 percent. DoD in a status report earlier this year said that it will achieve the target for the former, but not the latter, and further did not fully document the expected cost savings on the federal employee side, GAO said.
Also, it said, DoD has not justified why it used an exception in the law for positions deemed critical to exclude the majority of its own workers from the savings goals.
“DoD has not developed and implemented an efficiencies plan for reducing the civilian and contracted services workforces, and DoD did not demonstrate how its reductions are consistent with workforce management laws,” it concluded.
In a late 2015 report, GAO had recommended that DoD include costs savings for civilian personnel in its reports, and DoD concurred. DoD said it has been responsive to those recommendations but GAO said that only some progress has been made. GAO did not make any new recommendations, saying that DoD should fully implement the previous ones.
