Military Personnel: General and Flag Officer Requirements Are Unclear Based on DOD's 2003 Report to Congress
GAO-04-488
Published: Apr 21, 2004. Publicly Released: Apr 21, 2004.
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Highlights
The Fiscal Year 2003 National Defense Authorization Act directed the Department of Defense (DOD) to assess whether general and flag officer authorizations were sufficient to meet all requirements. GAO's objectives were to determine whether DOD (1) fully disclosed the results of its study in its March 2003 report to Congress and explained the rationale for any recommendations, (2) used an established methodology to meet the objectives of its study, and (3) incorporated lessons learned from a GAO review of DOD's 1997 general and flag officer study. The 2003 act also directed DOD to review legislation affecting general and flag officer management. DOD included the results of its review in the March 2003 report, making several recommendations. GAO plans a separate review of these issues and recommendations.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Defense | The Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to clarify the magnitude and impact of the gap between DOD's validated requirements for general and flag officers and congressional authorizations. This assessment should include (1) an analysis of the impact caused by the workarounds DOD uses to fill the gap between requirements and authorizations and (2) a more complete explanation of its recommendation not to seek additional authorizations in light of the study results showing that requirements exceeded authorizations. |
Closed – Implemented
DOD concurred with the recommendation, stating that it would address the impact of the gap and the use of workarounds in a separate study on alternative methods for dealing with the gap in requirements. DOD contracted with a private research organization to identify active and reserve general and flag officer billets that could or should be filled by civilians. This study, completed in July 2005, identified 172 active duty and 15 reserve positions that could be filled by civilians. The study noted that if the 172 active duty positions were filled by civilians, requirements for general and flag officer positions would not exceed authorizations. However, conversion of the 15 reserve positions to civilians would not close the gap on the reserve side. According to a DOD official responsible for general and flag officer management, since that study was completed, the services have begun to take a more integrated "senior leader" approach to filling some leadership positions by selecting either a civilian senior executive, retiree, or general and flag officer based on the qualifications of the individuals available for these positions.
|
| Department of Defense | The Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to update general and flag officer requirements periodically by identifying, assessing, and validating new general and flag officer requirements that emerge from DOD transformation efforts or other changes in the department. |
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD concurred with the recommendation, stating that the requirements database is maintained by each of the military services general or flag officer management offices. DOD also stated that current procedures were adequate to update requirements. However, as we noted in our report, the updated requirements were not going through the kind of job evaluation assessment and validation DOD used in its study.
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| Department of Defense | The Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to take steps to enhance the precision and usefulness of the general and flag officer requirements. At a minimum, DOD should more clearly account for all dual-hatted positions in terms of whether each position is dual-hatted for efficiency or out of necessity due to shortages in general and flag officer authorizations. Positions that are dual-hatted out of necessity should be treated as separate positions for purposes of identifying requirements. In addition, to the extent possible, DOD should track service contributions of general and flag officers to external (joint) requirements to assess whether each service's authorizations are sufficient to meet both internal and external requirements. |
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD concurred with the recommendation and stated that it would review all dual-hatted positions and add the additional information to the requirements database. While DOD stated that it conducted a new review of dual-hatted positions, we could not determine that DOD had updated its requirements database with this new information. DOD also stated that it would closely monitor service participation in the external (joint) arena and that current safeguards mitigate the impact of joint participation. GAO continues to believe that an assessment of whether general and flag officer authorizations are sufficient to meet all requirements necessitates the inclusion of both internal service and external requirements and that this assessment should be made at the service level because Congress has established service-specific authorization levels.
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| Department of Defense | The Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to incorporate the results of the ongoing civilian conversion study in a future update of general and flag officer requirements. |
Closed – Implemented
DOD concurred with the recommendation, stating that it would address the impact of the gap and the use of workarounds in a separate study on alternative methods for dealing with the gap in requirements. DOD contracted with a private research organization to identify active and reserve general and flag officer billets that could be filled by civilians. This study, completed in July 2005, identified 172 active duty and 15 reserve positions that could be filled by civilians. The study noted that if the 172 active duty positions were filled by civilians, requirements for general and flag officer positions would not exceed authorizations. However, conversion of the 15 reserve positions to civilians would not close the gap on the reserve side. According to a DOD official responsible for general and flag officer management, since that study was completed, the services have begun to take a more integrated "senior leader" approach to filling some leadership positions by selecting either a civilian senior executive, retiree, or general and flag officer based on the qualifications of the individuals available for these positions.
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Evaluation criteriaEvaluation methodsMilitary officersMilitary policiesJob classificationPersonnel managementReporting requirementsU.S. Air ForceU.S. Army