Summary: In response to a congressional request, GAO assessed: (1) whether the military departments' reorganizations satisfied the requirements and objectives of the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986; (2) the roles of the military staffs in the acquisition process; and (3) the changes in the civilian/military balance within the acquisition organizations.
GAO found that: (1) although the act was succeeding in its goal of strengthening civilian control of acquisition functions, the extent of independent program expertise within the military secretariats remained a concern; (2) the Army undertook the most extensive restructuring of its headquarters acquisition activities by integrating the former secretariat functions and staff and its acquisition organizations; (3) the Army has eliminated some of its systems coordinators for specific weapons systems programs by putting some of the functions in its chief of staff organizations, which may result in program expertise migrating to those organizations and detract from strengthening civilian control; (4) the Air Force merged its chief of staff acquisition office with the secretariat acquisition office, but retained military officers as the dominant leadership positions and assigned certain acquisition functions to readiness support, which did not comply with the act's requirements; (5) although the Air Force reorganization resulted in a transfer of some program element monitors to the acquisition secretariat, other program element monitors remained in the chief of staff organization and limited the Secretary's direct access to program information; (6) although the Navy made less extensive changes, a planned staff restructuring to augment the acquisition secretariat staff was still in process; (7) although civilians dominated the leadership positions in the Navy's acquisition organization, its reorganization did not consolidate the acquisition authority into one office; (8) the Navy's program expertise resided with the chief of naval operations (CNO) staff and detracted from strengthening civilian control over the acquisition process; and (9) the Marine Corps made substantial realignments, which brought it into compliance with the act.
