Summary: In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) personnel management accounting and reporting systems to determine whether they provide DOD managers with the kind of information they need to determine personnel shortfalls and excesses in occupational specialities in the event of a major mobilization.
GAO found that: (1) DOD does not reconcile the total military force by occupational specialities; (2) although the services do not consolidate and analyze occupation-specific skill data for their total-force requirements, the Army is refining a process to reconcile mobilization requirements and resources for all its military occupational specialties; (3) the services' current manpower and personnel management systems do not require any type of consolidated total-force occupational analysis; (4) although the services collect the raw data needed to perform total-force reconciliation, the data would require many adjustments before the services could use it for that purpose; (5) occupational data was not consistent and comparable across the services; and (6) DOD has no procedures for comparing requirements, authorizations, and inventory data on an occupation-specific, total-force basis.
