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.