From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Army Reserve and National Guard Soldier Availability for Mobilization Description: Audio Interview by GAO staff with Brenda Farrell, Director, Defense Capabilities and Management Related GAO Work: GAO-15-626: Army Reserve Components: Improvements Needed to Data Quality and Management Procedures to Better Report Soldier Availability Released: July 2015 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's July 2015. The Army Reserve and the Army National Guard comprise over half of the Army's total force. The readiness of these soldiers is key to the nation's defense, particularly as the number of active-duty soldiers is reduced in the coming years. A team led by Brenda Farrell, a director in GAO's Defense Capabilities and Management team, recently reviewed the Army's records of Reserve and National Guard soldiers’ availability. GAO's Jacques Arsenault sat down with Brenda to talk about what they found. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Can you talk a little bit about the Army Reserve and National Guard and the role that they play in the Army's planning and operations? [ Brenda Farrell: ] The Army Reserve and the Army National Guard are critical components of the Army's total work force. They are called upon to conduct the full spectrum of defense operations including homeland defense, civil support, natural disaster operations, as well as global operations. They served alongside their active duty counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan and Army officials will tell you they cannot conduct most of their operations without the Army reserve components. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So, with that critical role that they play, how does the Army attract the availability of these reserve soldiers? [ Brenda Farrell: ] First let's make sure we understand what we mean by availability. In the Army a soldier is assigned to a unit, and the unit is to be accessible for the mission within 72 hours. For the individual to be accessible he or she must meet a whole host of conditions dealing with medical, training, other administrative matters, and those administrative matters can entail things such as a soldier who's a single parent and has a number of children. That person needs to have a family plan in place. Who's going to take care of those dependents while he or she is deployed? The Army has dozens of databases to track these conditions in order to help determine the availability status. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Now I know in this report you looked at a lot of those databases and those reports and found a number of inaccuracies including some that were fairly eye opening. Can you talk about what you found? [ Brenda Farrell: ] We examined data from fiscal year 2012 through 2014 and found the data not to be reliable in order to determine the status of availability so we took the data from January 2015 and we looked at selected variables for those categories I just mentioned, medical training, etc., and we looked at those for 85,000 soldiers from 6 units. We found that for over 3,800 soldiers the records were incomplete, inaccurate, inconsistent. For example, we found 600 soldiers who had already deployed. We found 100 soldiers who were under 18. (You can't deploy if you're under 18(. We found cases of soldiers with medical-limiting conditions. We also found situations of soldiers who were incarcerated. We found questionable conditions that Army officials agreed with us. It was questionable whether or not these people were actually available, such as soldiers who had not attended their weekend drills for over six months. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Now, one of the things that you mentioned were medical conditions and I understand from your report that something that complicates the Army's records are illnesses and injuries, particularly whether they're service related. How do the reserve components verify the nature of injuries and illnesses? [ Brenda Farrell: ] Yes, the Army has two processes, an informal process for investigations and a formal process for investigations. The informal process takes place when there's no concerns about misconduct or negligence and that informal investigation is to be completed within 40 days. The formal investigation takes place when there are concerns about misconduct or negligence and those are to be completed within 75 days. We found that for both components, looking at them collectively, over three-fourths of these investigations were well overdue. This is a significant backlog, and importantly. the Army components do not have a plan in place how they're going to address this backlog. And that's one of our recommendations. You need a plan in place. How are you going to address it? What's going to be your timeframes? This is an important issue because the longer someone is in this investigation line then they're not available for deployment. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And finally what would you say is the bottom line of this report? [ Brenda Farrell: ] The bottom line is the Army does have a lot of information about soldiers' non-availability status, but unfortunately it's not accurate, and they really need to take steps to better manage this particular work force. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.