Recommendation: To determine the viability and cost-effectiveness of reducing transmission times for biometrics data, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, through the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, to comprehensively assess and then address, as appropriate, the factors that contribute to transmission time for biometrics data.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: In January 2016, DOD published Directive 8521.01E, Defense Biometrics, which directs the Secretary of the Army to measure the health and performance of the DOD Biometrics Enterprise and generate results for the Biometrics Principal Staff Assistant and the DOD Biometrics Executive Committee. OUSD(AT&L) and Army officials also noted that the department is required to obtain a favorable evaluation from the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) and the Army Test and Evaluation Command in order to obtain approval for extending the service life of DOD's authoritative biometric system. These officials note that the tests and evaluations required for such approval will include an assessment of transmission and response times against approved requirements for the biometrics system. However, Marine Corps officials highlighted continued biometrics data transmission and synchronization issues with a currently fielded biometric capability that uses some of the same technology we identified issues with during the course of our review. In Summer 2017, DOD informed GAO that the department will soon issue a report to address these issues, so GAO is keeping this recommendation open until such time as DOD's report becomes available for GAO review.

Recommendation: As one of only a few major acquisition programs to award a fixed-price incentive (firm target) development contract in recent years, evaluating performance and identifying lessons learned will be very illustrative and important to inform decision-makers and help guide and improve future defense acquisition programs. Therefore, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics should closely monitor the cost, schedule, and performance outcomes of the KC-46 program to identify positive or negative lessons learned.

Agency: Department of Defense: Office of the Secretary of Defense: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics
Status: Open

Comments: DOD compiled lessons learned during the source selection phase of the KC-46 program. As of August 2020, the Department has identified lessons learned during program implementation to evaluate cost, schedule and performance outcomes as we recommended. Program officials provided a copy of the report, which is with SAF/AQ for approval, and will then be distributed across the department.

Recommendation: To improve DOD's ability to identify how many headquarters personnel it has, including military, civilian and contractor personnel, and improve the information Congress and DOD need to ensure that headquarters organizations are appropriately sized and overhead positions are reduced to the extent possible, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Director of Administration and Management, in consultation with the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, to revise DOD Instruction 5100.73, Major DOD Headquarters Activities, to (1) include all major DOD headquarters activity organizations, (2) specify how contractors performing major DOD headquarters activity functions will be identified and included in headquarters reporting, (3) clarify how components are to compile the major DOD headquarters activities information needed to respond to the reporting requirements in section 1109 of the fiscal year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, and (4) establish time frames for implementing the actions above to improve tracking and reporting headquarters resources.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: The department partially concurred with this recommendation, stating that while it supports the refinement and update of DOD Instruction 5100.73, it uses the major headquarters activity designation to identify and manage the size of organizations in order to comply with statutory limits on headquarters personnel, not as tool to manage the organizational efficiency of the department or its components. With regard to the element of the recommendation concerning contractors, the department stated that in November of 2011 it had submitted a plan to the congressional defense committees for its Inventory of Contracts for Services that establishes both near and long term actions to improve visibility over all contracted services. This plan, and subsequent guidance issued in December 2011, describes the steps being taken to account for the level of effort of contracted support, based on the activity requiring the service. With regard to the element of the recommendation to meet reporting requirements for major headquarters activities, the department stated it had incorporated this requirement into the Defense Manpower Requirements Report in fiscal year 2012 and 2013. However, as of March 2020, DOD has not completed actions to address three of the four parts of this recommendation. In September 2017, DOD completed a revised framework for major DOD headquarters activities tied to funding, but as of March 2020 has not yet updated DOD Instruction 5100.73 to reflect all major DOD headquarters activity organizations included in the revised framework. DOD has also not identified an approach to include contractor personnel as part of its headquarters reporting. For fiscal year 2020 reporting, DOD intends to rely on the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation (FPDS-NG) as the basis for collecting information on contracted services. GAO has previously reported that FPDS-NG has certain limitations, including not being able to (a) identify and record more than one type of service purchased for each contracting action entered into the system, (b) identify the requiring activity specifically, and (c) determine the number of contractor full-time equivalents used to perform each service. Consequently, it is unclear the extent to which using FPDS-NG will enable DOD to determine the number of contractors and the functions they are performing in support of headquarters activities. DOD did clarify how it would respond to section 1109 of the fiscal year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act to satisfy this part of the recommendation. Lastly, DOD has also not yet established time frames for updating DOD Instruction 5100.73 or for determining how contractor personnel are to be included in major DOD headquarters activity reporting.

Recommendation: To help ensure that the military services' requirements for physician credentialing and privileging are consistent across the MHS, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and the Surgeons General of the military services to establish a DOD-wide process to identify and address existing inconsistencies between DOD's and the military services' physician credentialing and privileging requirements, including those inconsistencies we identified in this report.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: We will update the status of this recommendation when we receive additional information. As of September 2019, DOD has not provided information or documentation to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To help ensure that the military services' requirements for physician credentialing and privileging are consistent across the MHS, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and the Surgeons General of the military services to establish a DOD-wide process to coordinate all current and future efforts to revise physician credentialing and privileging requirements.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: We will update the status of this recommendation when we receive additional information. As of September 2019, DOD has not provided information or documentation to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To assure that information on a physician's clinical competence and practice history is documented and available to support credentialing and privileging decisions by Army MTFs, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and the Army Surgeon General to coordinate individual MTFs' efforts to establish mechanisms to collect and analyze data to evaluate physician performance and support performance assessments.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: We will update the status of this recommendation when we receive additional information. As of September 2019, DOD has not provided information or documentation to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To assure that information on a physician's clinical competence and practice history is documented and available to support credentialing and privileging decisions by Army MTFs, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and the Army Surgeon General to clarify requirements for how MTFs document follow-up on peer recommendations, including who is responsible for documenting follow-up and where that documentation should be filed.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: We will update the status of this recommendation when we receive additional information. As of September 2019, DOD has not provided information or documentation to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To assure that information on a physician's clinical competence and practice history is documented and available to support credentialing and privileging decisions by Army MTFs, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and the Army Surgeon General to clarify requirements for the information that physicians need to provide in their curriculum vitae (CV) so that MTFs can identify unaccounted for periods in practice history, as well as how MTFs should document explanations of any unaccounted for periods.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: We will update the status of this recommendation when we receive additional information. As of September 2019, DOD has not provided information or documentation to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To assure that information on a physician's clinical competence and practice history is documented and available to support credentialing and privileging decisions by Army MTFs, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and the Army Surgeon General to establish requirements for MTFs to document significant events that occur during the review of a credentials file, including which types of significant events should be documented, who is responsible for documenting significant events, and where that documentation should be filed.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: We will update the status of this recommendation when we receive additional information. As of September 2019, DOD has not provided information or documentation to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To assure that information on a physician's clinical competence and practice history is documented and available to support credentialing and privileging decisions by Army MTFs, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and the Army Surgeon General to establish a process to ensure that relevant information from the DPDB is documented in the credentials file.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: We will update the status of this recommendation when we receive additional information. As of September 2019, DOD has not provided information or documentation to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To assure that MTFs are fully complying with DOD's and the military services' requirements for physician credentialing and privileging and implementing these requirements appropriately, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Surgeons General of the military services to establish and implement an oversight process to conduct reviews of a sample of credentials files to identify and address areas of noncompliance and incomplete documentation.

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: We will update the status of this recommendation when we receive additional information. As of September 2019, DOD has not provided information or documentation to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To craft an effective strategy, the Secretary of Defense should direct that the department's strategic plan for corrosion prevention and mitigation include developing clearly defined goals, outcome-oriented objectives, and performance measures that show progress toward achieving objectives (these measures should include such elements as the expected return on investment and realized net savings of prevention projects).

Agency: Department of Defense
Status: Open

Comments: DOD concurred with all recommendations for Executive Action in the report. DOD stated it "is committed to meeting the requirements of Congress and, to the extent compatible with its core mission, the positive recommendations of the GAO report." In DOD's Corrosion Prevention and Mitigation Strategic Plan dated November 2004, DOD stated that the working integrated product team for Metrics, Impact and Sustainment established as one of its objectives initiating studies and surveys to determine the impact of corrosion, pinpoint critical areas for concentration of prevention and mitigation efforts and to develop metrics to measure the effect of corrosion and results of prevention and mitigation efforts. In its 2005 update to the DOD corrosion strategic plan, DOD included a revised list of metrics for cost, readiness and safety and the associated outcomes that would result from the implementation of these metrics. In addition, the strategic plan included details of corrosion projects funded in 2005 and 2006 and the expected results of completing the projects in terms of achieving cost savings, increasing readiness, and enhancing safety. As of March 2019, Corrosion Office officials stated that they plan to include goals, objectives, and performance measures in the update to the DOD Corrosion Prevention and Mitigation Strategic Plan. The Corrosion Office's goal is to complete this plan update by the end of calendar year 2020 . We will monitor the extent to which DOD implements this recommendation.