Military Readiness: Army and Marine Corps Reporting Provides Additional Data, but Actions Needed to Improve Consistency
Highlights
To obtain visibility of the capabilities of its military forces, the Department of Defense (DOD) has developed an enterprise of interconnected readiness reporting systems. In 2010, to better meet the information needs of their leaders, the Army and Marine Corps implemented new reporting requirements. House and Senate Reports, which accompanied proposed bills for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, directed GAO to review recent readiness reporting changes. GAO assessed the extent that 1) current readiness reporting policies have affected the content of readiness information provided to decision makers, 2) the services have consistently implemented their new policies, and 3) changes to the Army, Marine Corps, and Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) systems have affected the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS) enterprise. GAO analyzed DOD, Army, and Marine Corps policies, readiness data, service readiness reporting systems, and spoke to headquarters officials and reporting units.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Defense | To increase the visibility over the capabilities of units in RESET, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army in consultation with other system developers within the enterprise to develop an alternative means of indicating which units are in RESET without using C-5 as a means to flag units in RESET. |
The Army dropped the use of C-5 as a means of designating units in reset. Units now report their actual readiness level and there is a separate field to designate the unit's status within the Army's force generation cycle.
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| Department of Defense | To increase the timeliness and consistency of readiness information and thus enhance the usefulness of this information to decision makers, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army and Commandant of the Marine Corps to provide additional internal controls, which could include clarifying policy guidance, increasing quality assurance reviews, or putting system technical checks in place to prevent submission of data that does not comply with service readiness reporting requirements. |
The Army and Marine Corps have both put a number of business rules in place to increase the consistency of their units' readiness reporting. These rules include things such as not allowing a report to be submitted without a comment to describe any identified deficiency. The services have also increased the use of dropdown menus to lessen the chance of inadvertent key strokes that had previously led to inconsistent reporting.
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