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Open Recommendations (783 total)

Military Barracks: Poor Living Conditions Undermine Quality of Life and Readiness

GAO-23-105797
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that DOD develops a method to track and report complete Operation & Maintenance and Military Construction funding information in a combined manner for barracks housing programs, especially with respect to funding needed to improve barracks conditions, including both funding requirements and expenditures. In addition, the method should track and report complete Military Personnel funding with respect to funding needed to house service members typically required to live in barracks, such as service members living in private sector housing due to insufficient space in barracks, including both funding requirements and expenditures. (Recommendation 15)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

VA Disability Benefits: Actions Needed to Address Challenges Reserve Component Members Face Accessing Compensation

GAO-24-105400
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that DOD's reserve components make the guidance on reporting and documenting health conditions for the purposes of disability compensation prominently available to reserve component members. (Recommendation 4)
Open
DOD agreed with this recommendation. Once DOD and VA finish collaborating to produce guidance and outreach materials, DOD plans to direct the Secretaries of the Military Departments to make the final products prominently available to their Reserve Component members. We will close this recommendation when this effort is complete.

DOD Intelligence: Actions Needed to Strengthen Program Oversight and Manage Risks

GAO-24-106190
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that DOD's Senior Intelligence Oversight Official improve the DOD intelligence oversight office's monitoring process for inspection recommendations. (Recommendation 1)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Ukraine: DOD Should Improve Data for Both Defense Article Delivery and End-Use Monitoring

GAO-24-106289
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should formally evaluate the modified EUM requirements and practices in Ukraine to ensure they are meeting program objectives and use the results of the assessment to update requirements for monitoring defense articles in a hostile environment, as appropriate. (Recommendation 6)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Military Justice: Increased Oversight, Data Collection, and Analysis Could Aid Assessment of Racial Disparities

GAO-24-106386
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure the department-level office designated to oversee coordination of the military departments' racial disparity assessments coordinates with the military departments to establish standard terminology and reporting categories, analyses, and reporting format and content to be used in future assessments of racial disparities in military justice and discipline processes. (Recommendation 5)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Climate Change Adaptation: DOD Needs to Better Incorporate Adaptation into Planning and Collaboration at Overseas Installations

GAO-18-206
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should direct the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy), the geographic combatant commands, the sub-unified commands, and the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force to consider climate change adaptation as they develop DOD's position for future negotiations with host-nation governments on cost-sharing activities, when relevant or appropriate. (Recommendation 5)
Open
In October 2017, DOD partially concurred with our recommendation. According to a July 2018 Corrective Action Plan provided by DOD, the Department is continuing to review and update the processes and criteria governing host-nation cost-sharing negotiations to strengthen or incorporate resilience measures. Since each bilateral agreement is unique, these must be completed on a case-by-case basis. Further, DOD noted that any updates would occur on a "rolling basis." DOD officials stated that as of June 2021 the department had not taken any actions to implement this recommendation. As of November 2023, DOD had not provided GAO with further updates on the status of this recommendation. As such, we will continue to monitor the status of DOD's efforts to address this recommendation.

F-35 Aircraft Sustainment: DOD Needs to Address Substantial Supply Chain Challenges

GAO-19-321
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, together with the F-35 Program Executive Officer, issues a policy consistent with DOD guidance that clearly establishes how DOD will maintain accountability for F-35 parts within the supply chain, and identify the steps needed to implement the policy retrospectively and prospectively—for example, how DOD will obtain the necessary data from the contractor. This policy should provide clarity on how F-35 parts will be categorized, specify how the program will implement DOD regulations, and define prime contractor roles and responsibilities. (Recommendation 5)
Open
DOD concurred with this recommendation. As of February 2022, DOD had taken some steps to address this recommendation. In particular, it has issued a program directive that establishes a F-35 Accountable Property Management Framework. This directive clarifies several key aspects of property accountability for the program, including clarifying certain roles and responsibilities and establishing that global-pooled assets, such as spare parts, are to be categorized as government furnished property. This is a critical first step, but this framework does not provide details on how it will be implemented and DOD also continues to face challenges with establishing accountability for the global spares pool, including with establishing a fully functioning Accountable Property System of Record. DOD stated that it is working to implement a plan to complete internal policy changes to bring the F-35 program fully into alignment with Department policy by January 2023. We will continue to monitor DOD's efforts in this area.

Military Housing Privatization: DOD Should Take Steps to Improve Monitoring, Reporting, and Risk Assessment

GAO-18-218
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment takes steps to resume issuing required reports to Congress on the financial condition of privatized housing in a timely manner. (Recommendation 4)
Open
DOD concurred with this recommendation in its response to our report and stated that it was working to further streamline the reporting format and data collection process to ensure more timely reporting to Congress. Subsequently, in September 2018 DOD issued its report to Congress on the financial condition of privatized housing covering fiscal years 2015 and 2016, and in May 2019 DOD issued the report covering fiscal year 2017. In September 2020, DOD issued the report covering fiscal year 2018, and in March 2022 DOD issued the report covering fiscal year 2019. However, as of June 2023, DOD had not provided an update on the status of the required annual reports to Congress to indicate that it had resumed issuing these reports in a timely manner. As such, we will continue to monitor DOD's actions to implement this recommendation.

DOD and Coast Guard: Actions Needed to Increase Oversight and Management Information on Hazing Incidents Involving Servicemembers

GAO-16-226
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense To promote greater visibility over the extent of hazing in DOD to better inform DOD and military service actions to address hazing, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, in collaboration with the Secretaries of the Military Departments, to evaluate prevalence of hazing in the military services.
Open
DOD concurred with this recommendation in its written comments on our report. In May 2021, DOD issued its Harassment Prevention Strategy in which it identified "past year prevalence of DOD harassment" as a metric that it will use to assess the effect of prevention activities. However, this does not address our recommendation because DOD has not evaluated prevalence, which is an estimate of all hazing incidents. Further, DOD cannot develop a metric using prevalence of hazing incidents until they evaluate the extent of hazing in DOD. In October 2023, DOD stated that it was exploring the most appropriate way to measure the prevalence of hazing in light of requirements placed on its servicemember surveys by Congress and the Office of Management and Budget and provided an estimated completion date of December 2026 for this recommendation. We will continue to monitor DOD's efforts to address our recommendation.

Military Depots: Actions Needed to Improve Poor Conditions of Facilities and Equipment That Affect Maintenance Timeliness and Efficiency

GAO-19-242
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment develops an approach for managing service depot investments that includes management monitoring and regular reporting to decision makers and Congress on progress. (Recommendation 13)
Open
DOD did not concur with our recommendation that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment (ASD for Sustainment) develop an approach for managing service depot investments. In its response, DOD stated it could not develop such an approach until the services finalized and resourced depot optimization plans. DOD stated it would continue to monitor capital investments at service depots through the budget process. We continue to believe that the ASD for Sustainment should develop an approach for managing service depot investments that includes management monitoring and regular reporting to decision makers and Congress on progress for several reasons. First, our recommendation is focused on the ASD for Sustainment developing an approach for overseeing the services' overall depot investments, not just those contained in their optimization plans. Second, the ASD for Sustainment's early involvement in the services' development and resourcing of depot optimization plans could enhance service efforts to identify appropriate analytically-based goals aligned with the Secretary of Defense's readiness objectives, enhance optimization across the DOD enterprise, and ensure sustained senior leadership attention to achieving optimal depot efficiency and effectiveness. Third, while monitoring investments at the service depots through the budget process is an important aspect of oversight, the ASD for Sustainment could enhance the oversight of and accountability over depot investments through a more comprehensive oversight approach. Finally, having regular reporting of progress will help ensure DOD leadership and the Congress have the information needed to help make critical funding and policy decisions. In the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress mandated that DOD create a comprehensive strategy for improving depot infrastructure by October 2020. DOD issued this strategy in November 2021, but excluded discussion on managing service depot investments. According to OSD officials, annual updates to Congress will include information on service depot investments. However, they don't expect to complete this effort until fiscal year 2024. To fully implement this recommendation, DOD needs to provide evidence of actions taken to manage service depot investments. As of May 2023, OSD had provided no additional updates on its anticipated timeframe.
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