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Military Personnel: Army Needs to Focus on Cost-Effective Use of Financial Incentives and Quality Standards in Managing Force Growth

GAO-09-256 Published: May 04, 2009. Publicly Released: May 04, 2009.
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Highlights

To ease the pace of overseas deployments, the President announced a plan in 2007 to grow the Army's end strength by about 7 percent by 2013. GAO was asked to evaluate the Army's management of this growth. Specifically, GAO determined the extent to which the Army has (1) made progress in growing the force, (2) awarded cost-effective bonuses to attract and retain enlistees, (3) maintained the quality of its enlisted force, and (4) directed growth in its officer force to areas of need and determined whether trade-offs it has made to alleviate shortages will have long-term effects. GAO reviewed the Army's growth plans, bonuses, waivers, and officer promotions, and interviewed Defense and Army officials.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense To enhance its existing processes to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of enlisted personnel and to avoid making excessive payments to achieve desired results, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army to build on currently available analyses that will enable the Army to set cost-effective enlistment and reenlistment bonuses.
Closed – Implemented
DOD concurred with this recommendation. It stated that in February 2009, it had contracted a DOD-wide research study entitled "Recruiting and Retention Effectiveness of Cash Incentives." DOD stated that the objective of this research is to assess the impact on enlistment and reenlistment propensity of military cash incentives used in the services. DOD expects to receive the first draft of this research in June 2009. As of July 2012, DOD's point of contact for this report (LTC Greg Brown) had told us that the services have made cuts to their bonuses for a number of reasons, including the fact that GAO made this recommendation. As a result, DOD was able to reduce $947.3 million from eight of the services' FY 2010 Military Personnel budgets. DOD's point of contact said that GAO's recommendations had forced OSD and the services to put more analytical rigor into how they determine amounts of bonuses that are cost-effective.
Department of Defense To enable the most efficient use of recruiting resources, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army to collect data on the cost-effectiveness of the Army's conduct waiver polices--including costs associated with the waiver review and approval process and with future separations of soldiers with conduct waivers for adverse reasons--and use these data to inform the Army's waiver policies.
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD concurred with this recommendation. It stated that on February 17, 2009, the Army Audit Agency had begun an audit of the Army recruiting waiver program that will, among other things, examine whether the active, Reserve, and National Guard components are using appropriate and uniform standards for granting and processing enlistment waivers. In its July 2012 DAMIS report, the Army states that on Jan. 14, 2010, it issued standard operating procedures on waivers in response to a report by the Army Audit Agency. While these operating procedures require that the numbers and types of waivers be reported, they do not address the deficiency cited by GAO: the lack of cost data on waivers that would allow the Army to determine the cost-effectiveness of its waiver policies.
Department of Defense Should the Army decide to offer incentives to officers in the future, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army to build on currently available analyses that will enable the Army, with the direction and assistance of the Secretary of Defense, to set cost-effective bonus amounts and other incentives.
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD concurred with the recommendation. It stated that DOD's oversight of officer retention is rigorous and demands that the military services provide a detailed business case before the Office of the Secretary of Defense grants the requesting service the authority to employ a retention bonus. As of July 2012, the Army stated that it did not intend to offer any further incentives to officers.
Department of Defense To enable the Army to make informed decisions regarding the management of its officer corps over time, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army to track--and if necessary correct--any effects that its actions to alleviate shortages may have on the officer corps, particularly in cases in which the Army has deviated from benchmarks established in the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act.
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD partially concurred with this recommendation. It stated that DOPMA officer promotion benchmarks represent generalized guidelines but are not intended under present law and policy to serve as fixed mandates. It stated that OSD policy is already explicit in defining desired promotion timing and opportunity. As of July 2012, the Army stated that DOD has taken no further action in response to this recommendation. They said that data on officer promotions are tracked already, and promotion rates higher than the established benchmarks are acceptable.

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Topics

Armed forces reservesArmy personnelAttrition ratesCost analysisCost effectiveness analysisData collectionData integrityEmployee incentivesHuman capital planningMilitary cost controlMilitary enlistmentMilitary forcesMilitary officersMilitary operationsMilitary personnelMilitary personnel retentionMilitary recruitingMilitary reenlistment bonusesMilitary reserve personnelMilitary trainingNational GuardPersonnel recruitingQuality assuranceStrategic planningWaiversProgram goals or objectives