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Military Personnel: Management and Oversight of Selective Reenlistment Bonus Program Needs Improvement

GAO-03-149 Published: Nov 25, 2002. Publicly Released: Nov 25, 2002.
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Highlights

Because of the recent growth in DOD's Selective Reenlistment Bonus Program, the House Appropriations Committee asked GAO to determine (1) the extent to which the services have followed their criteria for managing their programs and (2) whether DOD has provided adequate guidance for and oversight of the program.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense In the absence of a DOD instruction governing the services' implementation of the program, the Secretary of Defense should require services to apply all the criteria they have established for selecting critical specialties under their Selective Reenlistment Bonus Programs. In the case of the Army, criteria should be established for selecting critical specialties.
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD reported that established criteria permit the Services to selectively target their resources to meet service-unique retention needs in a timely and cost effective manner. The criteria were written to provide flexibility for Service management to meet their inventory shortfalls. The DOD criteria are sound and the Services? processes are balanced. Although the Army does not have a program regulation, the criteria it uses are sound. In administering the program, standards are in place to review historical and projected strengths, current and historical retention data, replacement costs, levels of fill by skill level, and readiness. These tools are used to determine if a specialty needs a bonus to ensure the required fill and experience balance, and senior level Army officials review and approve bonus awards.
Department of Defense In the absence of a DOD instruction governing the services' implementation of the program, the Secretary of Defense should require services to manage their programs to stay within their appropriations or, if circumstances require, provide the Office of the Secretary of Defense with adequate justification for increased expenditures over appropriated amounts.
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD stated that it would take no action since "Established criteria permit the Services to selectively target their resources to meet service-unique retention needs in a timely and cost effective manner. The criteria were written to provide flexibility for Service management to meet their inventory shortfalls. The DOD criteria are sound and the Services' processes are balanced. Although the Army does not have a program regulation, the criteria it uses are sound. In administering the program, standards are in place to review historical and projected strengths, current and historical retention data, replacement costs, levels of fill by skill level, and readiness. These tools are used to determine if a specialty needs a bonus to ensure the required fill and experience balance and senior level Army officials review and approve bonus awards."
Department of Defense To improve DOD's oversight and the services' management of the Selective Reenlistment Bonus Program, the Secretary of Defense should require that the Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness issue an instruction that provides the services with guidance for administering and selecting specialties for inclusion in their programs.
Closed – Implemented
On December 15, 2004, DOD issued a revised instruction that provides recommended guidance to govern the services? use of the selective reenlistment bonus (SRB) program. Rather than issuing the guidance under the previous instruction number 1304.22, DOD issued a new instruction DODI 1304.29. This instruction replaces DODI 1304.22, which was rescinded in 1996. This new instruction provides the services with guidance for administering and selecting specialties for inclusion in their SRB programs.
Department of Defense To improve DOD's oversight and the services' management of the Selective Reenlistment Bonus Program, the Secretary of Defense should require that the Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness conduct annual reviews of the Selective Reenlistment Bonus Program as required by DOD's directive.
Closed – Implemented
DOD has taken action to implement this recommendation. In December 2004, the department completed the development of a metric to track reenlistment for skills deemed most critical for retention by the Services. It began reporting the metric for the first quarter of this fiscal year at the quarterly Balanced Score Card briefing to the USD(P&R).

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Topics

Eligibility criteriaMilitary forcesMilitary reenlistment bonusesMilitary personnel retentionProgram evaluationU.S. ArmyU.S. NavyU.S. Air ForceU.S. Marine CorpsBudget requests