Military Personnel: DOD and the Services Need to Take Additional
Steps to Improve Mobilization Data for the Reserve Components
(20-SEP-06, GAO-06-1068).
GAO has previously reported on the Department of Defense's (DOD)
ability to track reservists deployed to the theater of operations
and made recommendations. Reliable mobilization and deployment
data are critical for making decisions about reserve force
availability and medical surveillance. Because of broad
congressional interest, GAO initiated a review under the
Comptroller General's authority to conduct evaluations on his own
initiative to determine (1) what DOD data indicate are the number
of reservists mobilized and deployed in support of the Global War
on Terrorism (GWOT) and the selected demographic and deployment
characteristics of those deployed and (2) whether DOD's reserve
deployment and mobilization data and analyses are reliable. GAO
analyzed data and data analyses from DOD's Contingency Tracking
System (CTS) and interviewed agency officials.
-------------------------Indexing Terms-------------------------
REPORTNUM: GAO-06-1068
ACCNO: A61346
TITLE: Military Personnel: DOD and the Services Need to Take
Additional Steps to Improve Mobilization Data for the Reserve
Components
DATE: 09/20/2006
SUBJECT: Armed forces reserves
Data collection
Data integrity
Defense capabilities
Internal controls
Military demographics
Military forces
Military personnel
Military personnel deployment
Military reserve personnel
Mobilization
Defense Manpower Data Center
Global War on Terrorism
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GAO-06-1068
* Results in Brief
* Background
* DOD Data Show Demographic and Deployment Characteristics of
* DOD Data on Selected Demographic and Deployment Variables
* Number of Reservists Mobilized and Deployed
* Number of Reservists Who Have Deployed One, Two, or Three or
* Number of Reservists Who Have Spent 1 Year or Less, 1 to 2 Y
* Reserve Component Categories for Reservists Deployed in Supp
* Citizenship Status of Reservists at the Time of Their Most C
* Race and Ethnicity for Reservists Deployed in Support of GWO
* Gender of Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT
* State of Residence of Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT
* Occupational Information about Enlisted and Officer Reservis
* Data for the Volunteer Status, Location Deployed, and Unit D
* DOD and the Services Have Taken Steps to Improve the Reliabi
* DMDC and the Services Are Updating the Mobilization Data in
* DOD Has Not Fully Addressed Data Issues That Could Improve D
* DMDC Does Not Have Effective Controls for Ensuring the Accur
* Conclusions
* Recommendations for Executive Action
* Agency Comments and Our Evaluation
* Appendix I: Scope and Methodology
* Appendix II: Data on Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT
* Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Defense
* Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments
* GAO Contact
* Acknowledgments
* Obtaining Copies of GAO Reports and Testimony
* Order by Mail or Phone
* To Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Federal Programs
* Congressional Relations
* Public Affairs
Report to Congressional Committees
United States Government Accountability Office
GAO
September 2006
MILITARY PERSONNEL
DOD and the Services Need to Take Additional Steps to Improve Mobilization
Data for the Reserve Components
GAO-06-1068
Contents
Letter 1
Results in Brief 3
Background 6
DOD Data Show Demographic and Deployment Characteristics of Hundreds of
Thousands of Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT 10
DOD and the Services Have Taken Steps to Improve the Reliability of
Reserve Component Data, but More Needs to Be Done 25
Conclusions 34
Recommendations for Executive Action 35
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 35
Appendix I Scope and Methodology 42
Appendix II Data on Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT through June
30, 2006 47
Appendix III Comments from the Department of Defense 51
Appendix IV GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 54
Tables
Table 1: Citizenship Status of Reservists Deployed in Support of the
Global War on Terrorism by Fiscal Year through June 30, 2006 20
Table 2: Race of Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism through June 30, 2006 21
Table 3: Ethnicity of Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism through June 30, 2006 21
Table 4: Gender of Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism by Reserve Component through June 30, 2006 22
Table 5: Reserve Component Categories for Reservists Deployed in Support
of the Global War on Terrorism by Fiscal Year through June 30, 2006 47
Table 6: State, Territories, and Armed Forces Areas of Residence for
Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on Terrorism through June
30, 2006 48
Figures
Figure 1: Organizational Hierarchy for DOD's Defense Manpower Data Center
9
Figure 2: Reservists Mobilized and Deployed in Support of the Global War
on Terrorism through June 30, 2006 12
Figure 3: Reservists Mobilized in Support of the Global War on Terrorism
by Fiscal Year through June 30, 2006 13
Figure 4: Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on Terrorism by
Fiscal Year through June 30, 2006 14
Figure 5: Number of Reservists Who Have Deployed One, Two, or Three or
More Times in Support of the Global War on Terrorism through June 30, 2006
16
Figure 6: Number of Reservists Who Have Spent 1 Year or Less, 1 to 2
Years, or More Than 2 Years Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism through June 30, 2006 17
Figure 7: Percentage of Reservists Deployed in the Selected Reserve in
Support of the Global War on Terrorism through June 30, 2006 18
Figure 8: Citizenship Status of Reservists at the Time of Their Most
Current Deployment in Support of the Global War on Terrorism through June
30, 2006 19
Figure 9: Number of Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism by State through June 30, 2006 23
Abbreviations
CTS Contingency Tracking System
DEERS Defense Eligibility Enrollment Reporting System
DFAS Defense Finance and Accounting Service
DIMHRS Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System
DMDC Defense Manpower Data Center
DOD Department of Defense
GWOT Global War on Terrorism
RCCPDS Reserve Components Common Personnel Data System
USD (P&R) Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness
This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright
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separately.
United States Government Accountability Office
Washington, DC 20548
September 20, 2006
Congressional Committees
Since President Bush signed an Executive Order establishing the Global War
on Terrorism (GWOT)1 on September 14, 2001, hundreds of thousands of
National Guard and Reserve servicemembers2 have been activated, mobilized,
and deployed3 in support of efforts in, among other places, Afghanistan
and Iraq. As the Department of Defense (DOD) continues to rely on about
1.3 million reservists to carry out its military operations domestically
and abroad, there continues to be congressional interest in the impact of
GWOT on reserve employment, income change, medical and health status of
reservists, and other issues.
For decades, DOD has been collecting and reporting information on active
duty and reserve component servicemembers. However, it was not until
October 2001, less than a month after the terrorist attacks, that DOD
emphasized the need for the services to specifically report information
about mobilized and deployed reservists who support contingencies.4 While
DOD has been collecting this information, several reports have emphasized
information about reservists who have been mobilized, not deployed.
Further, some of our prior reports5 have raised concerns about DOD's
ability to effectively track reservists who are being deployed to the
theater of operation. Information about reservists' deployments is needed
to assess reserve force availability and to link reservists' locations
with exposure to medical hazards. Our past work has also confirmed that it
is critical that DOD collect, maintain, and report reliable information on
deployed reservists. In our experience, the data that DOD has reported in
the past about the number of reservists who have been mobilized and
deployed have not been consistent because, for example, the data used came
from different or varied sources and the analyses performed were based on
different analytical assumptions.
1 GWOT includes missions such as Operation Enduring Freedom with
operations in and around Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom with
operations in and around Iraq.
2 National Guard and Reserve servicemembers include the collective forces
of the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard, as well as the
forces from the Army Reserve, the Navy Reserve, the Marine Corps Reserve,
and the Air Force Reserve. They are known collectively as the reserve
component. This report does not address the Coast Guard Reserve because it
comes under the day-to-day control of the Department of Homeland Security
rather than the Department of Defense (DOD). The Coast Guard does,
however, assist DOD in meeting its commitments and DOD data indicate that
7,053 Coast Guard reservists were mobilized and 204 were deployed in
support of GWOT through June 30, 2006.
3 According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and
Associated Terms, a servicemember is activated when he or she is ordered
to full-time duty in the active military of the United States. A
servicemember is mobilized when he or she becomes part of the process of
assembling and organizing personnel and equipment, activating or
federalizing units and members of the National Guard and Reserves for
active duty, and bringing the armed forces to a state of readiness for war
or other national emergency. A servicemember is deployed when he or she
becomes part of the process to relocate forces and materiel to desired
operational areas. For the purposes of this report, the term mobilized
will refer to reservists who have been activated, mobilized, or both in
support of GWOT.
4 Department of Defense, the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and
Readiness, memorandum, "Reporting of Personnel Data in Support of the
National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks," October 4,
2001.
This report, initiated under the Comptroller General's authority to
conduct evaluations on his own initiative, addressed the following issues:
(1) what DOD data indicate are the number of reservists mobilized and
deployed in support of GWOT and the selected demographic and deployment
characteristics of those deployed and (2) whether DOD's reserve deployment
and mobilization data and analyses are reliable.
For this report, we used data provided by the Defense Manpower Data Center
(DMDC), which is DOD's repository for departmentwide data. We outline the
major assumptions we used to analyze the data in the scope and methodology
section of this report (see app. I). Specifically, to address our
objectives, we obtained and analyzed data from DMDC's Contingency Tracking
System (CTS). CTS is DMDC's system that brings together data about GWOT
from many sources and, according to a senior DMDC official, is the only
source of these data within DOD. The Joint Staff's Manpower and Personnel
office is working toward using only CTS data to determine reserve force
availability for future operations. We also performed reliability
assessments on the data after obtaining an understanding of the data file
structure and the sources of the data. Specifically, we (1) performed
electronic testing of the data files for completeness (that is, missing
data), out-of-range values, and dates outside of valid time frames; (2)
assessed the relationships among data elements; and (3) worked with agency
officials to identify data problems, such as which variables may be
unreliable. We also analyzed the extent to which data provided by DMDC
changed during this review as a result of DMDC's data cleaning effort,
known as a rebaselining. Using applicable guidance,6 we interviewed
knowledgeable officials at DMDC about internal control procedures and
other matters. In addition to the officials at DMDC, we also interviewed
knowledgeable officials from the services, the Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Manpower and Personnel office. The data we report are sufficiently
reliable for our purposes (that is, providing descriptive information)
with one caveat. Since the Army is in the process of updating its
mobilization data, we could not assess the reliability of the Army's
mobilization data to the same extent as those of the other services. In
comparing our analyses of the data with the analyses reported by DMDC, we
determined that DMDC's analyses were not sufficiently reliable for this
report. We performed our audit work from December 2005 through August 2006
in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. A
more thorough description of our scope and methodology is provided in
appendix I.
5 See, for example, GAO, Defense Health Care: Medical Surveillance
Improved Since Gulf War, but Mixed Results in Bosnia, GAO/NSIAD-97-136
(Washington, D.C.: May 13, 1997); Military Personnel: DOD Actions Needed
to Improve the Efficiency of Mobilizations for Reserve Forces, GAO-03-921
(Washington, D.C.: Aug. 21, 2003); Military Personnel: DOD Needs to
Address Long-term Reserve Force Availability and Related Mobilization and
Demobilization Issues, GAO-04-1031 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 15, 2004); and
Defense Health Care: Improvements Needed in Occupational and Environmental
Health Surveillance during Deployments to Address Immediate and Long-term
Health Issues, GAO-05-632 (Washington, D.C.: July 14, 2005).
Results in Brief
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that more than 531,000 reservists have
been mobilized in support of GWOT and more than 378,000 reservists, or
almost 71 percent of the number mobilized, have been deployed in support
of GWOT as of June 30, 2006. The Army National Guard has mobilized and
deployed the greatest number of reservists-more than 230,000 have been
mobilized and more than 163,000 have been deployed. The Navy Reserve had
the fewest number of reservists mobilized-with about 29,000
reservists-while the Marine Corps Reserve had the fewest number deployed
with about 19,000 reservists. The number of reservists mobilized increased
through fiscal year 2003 and has declined since then, while the number of
reservists deployed increased through fiscal year 2003 and then remained
stable through fiscal year 2005. In addition, the majority of reservists
have been deployed once, and of those deployed in support of GWOT,
most-about 307,000 reservists, or 81 percent-have spent a year or less
deployed. Alternatively, more than 65,000 reservists, or 17 percent, have
spent more than 1 year but less than 2 years deployed, and about 6,000
reservists, or fewer than 2 percent, have spent more than 2 years
deployed. The majority of those deployed were part of the Selected
Reserve7 and almost 98 percent were U.S. citizens. Since GWOT began, about
78 percent of reservists who were deployed were White; about 14 percent
were Black or African American; about 2 percent were Asian, Native
Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander; and about 1 percent were American
Indian or Alaskan Native. Almost 90 percent identified themselves as
non-Hispanic and 8 percent as Hispanic. Of those deployed, 89 percent were
male and 11 percent were female, and 39 percent came from states in the
southern8 United States, 23 percent from the midwest,9 18 percent from
states in the western10 United States, and 15 percent came from states in
the northeast.11 There were three variables-volunteer status,12 location
deployed, and deploying unit-required by DOD policy for which DMDC could
not provide data either because the data did not exist or because they
were not reliable enough for the purposes of this report.
6 GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government,
GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1 (Washington, D.C.: November 1999).
We found the deployment and mobilization data we used to be reliable for
providing descriptive information. However, the mobilization data, some
deployment data fields, and DMDC's processes for data analyses need
improvement. DMDC and the services have recently taken steps to improve
the reliability of mobilization data; however, additional steps are needed
to make mobilization data and DMDC's analyses of mobilization and
deployment data more reliable, as is required by DOD policy and federal
government internal control standards. DMDC and the services have
undertaken an effort to "rebaseline" or replace all previous
service-provided mobilization data in DMDC's database with new data from
the services. To date, the Navy has validated its reserve component data
file and the Air Force has certified that it has rebaselined its reserve
component data. However, the Army, which has mobilized and deployed the
largest number of reservists, has not completed its rebaselining effort
and has not provided a time frame for doing so. We recognize that the
rebaselining effort is a considerable undertaking replete with numerous
challenges and that it is a positive step in improving the reliability of
the data. However, even if the rebaselining effort were complete,
outstanding issues with certain data definitions across the services would
continue to affect the accuracy and completeness of the data. For example,
the use of the terms "activated," "mobilized," and "deployed" is not
standardized within and among the services. Similarly, there is
variability across the services in the completeness of other variables and
data fields, such as volunteer status, deployment location, and deploying
unit. Along with the rebaselining effort, ensuring that the services
address these data issues and provide all required data to DMDC is an
important step in improving the reliability of the data. With respect to
DMDC's quantitative analyses of its CTS data, DMDC has not documented many
of its procedures, including those for verifying the data analyses it
provides to its customers. Because the data analyses DMDC provided to us
had numerous errors-including overcounting the number of reservists'
deployments as well as overcounting the number of days some reservists
were deployed-and were thus unreliable, we question the effectiveness of
its verification procedures and other supporting internal control
procedures for ensuring accurate reporting. Federal internal control
standards require that data control activities, such as edit checks,
verifications, and reconciliations, be conducted and documented to help
provide reasonable assurance that agency objectives are being met. Until
DOD addresses continuing data definition issues and DMDC documents the
internal control procedures it uses to analyze data and verify its
analyses of data, the information provided to decision makers within
Congress and DOD may be unreliable. Without reliable data and analyses,
decision makers will not be in the best position to make informed
decisions that are grounded in accurate and complete information about
reserve component force availability and medical surveillance issues.
7 The Selected Reserve is composed of those units and individuals
designated by their respective services and approved by the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff as so essential to initial wartime missions that
they have priority for training, equipment, and personnel over all other
reserve elements (10 U.S.C. S: 10143).
8 The Census Bureau includes the following states in its definition of the
southern United States: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. The
District of Columbia is also included.
9 The Census Bureau includes the following states in its definition of the
midwestern United States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and
Wisconsin.
10 The Census Bureau includes the following states in its definition of
the western United States: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii,
Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
11 The Census Bureau includes the following states in its definition of
the northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
12 The legal authority used to involuntarily activate reservists in
response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, limits the number
that may be involuntarily activated to 1,000,000 (10 U.S.C. S: 12302(c)).
We are making recommendations to the Secretary of Defense to provide
guidance to the services to (1) better define and standardize the use of
key terms, like deployment, and (2) provide all required data, such as
volunteer status and location deployed, to DMDC as well as address data
inconsistencies identified by DMDC. We are also recommending that DMDC
document its internal procedures and processes, including the assumptions
it uses in its data analyses. The Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel
and Readiness provided written comments on a draft of the report. In its
comments, DOD generally concurred with our recommendations, except for the
recommendation to collaborate with other DOD offices on the reasonableness
of the assumptions established and used by DMDC in its data analyses. DOD
stated that DMDC is a support organization and that each organization that
requests reports provides the assumptions that DMDC uses to develop the
reports. However, our audit work showed that DMDC has established and uses
some basic assumptions in analyzing data and that DMDC may not always
discuss these assumptions with other DOD offices, such as Reserve Affairs.
As a result, we continue to emphasize the need for DMDC to document these
assumptions and to collaborate with these offices to ensure a common
understanding of these assumptions. DOD stated it has taken some action on
the other recommendations. DOD also provided technical comments, which we
have incorporated in the report, as appropriate. DOD's comments are
reprinted in their entirety in appendix III of this report.
Background
In 1975, DOD implemented the Reserve Components Common Personnel Data
System (RCCPDS)13 to collect information on current and past members of
the six reserve components-Army National Guard, Air National Guard, Army
Reserve, Navy Reserve, Marine Corps Reserve, and Air Force Reserve. This
information included data on reservists' personal characteristics, such as
name, Social Security number, date of birth, gender, home address, and
education, as well as data on their military characteristics, such as
service, reserve component, prior service status, and date of initial
entry into the reserve forces. According to the director of DMDC, the
services send daily, weekly, and monthly updated data submissions to DMDC
in accordance with applicable guidance.14
13 RCCPDS is an automated information system and associated database that
was established as the official source of statistical tabulation of
reserve component strengths and related data for various users, to include
DOD and Congress.
After the first Gulf War, in a May 15, 1991, memorandum,15 DOD identified
16 recommendations requiring action by many offices within DOD regarding
Desert Storm personnel data issues. For example, the memorandum said that
DOD should consistently report on who participated in the operations and
cites examples of key terms, such as in theater, that were being
interpreted differently by DMDC, the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
and the services. In December 1991,16 DOD reported on how DMDC provided
information about operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. This report
cited areas for improvement. For example, the report indicated that DMDC
created makeshift procedures to establish and maintain the new data
sources and to accommodate varied data requests. The report cited that
these procedures sometimes resulted in inconsistent or incomplete data
being provided in response to a request. On May 2, 2001, DOD updated
guidance to the military services, among others, to maintain a centralized
database of active duty personnel.17 In this guidance, DOD requires the
services to report personnel information about all active duty military
servicemembers as well as reservists who are ordered to active duty. While
this instruction called for the services to report information about
servicemembers on active duty in support of a contingency, the
requirements for reporting contingency data were not specific.
14 DOD Instruction 1336.5, Automated Extract of Active Duty Military
Personnel Records, May 2, 2001, and DOD Instruction 7730.54, which has
been updated several times since it was first released in 1975.
15 DOD Manpower Data Center Memorandum, "Recommendations Based on Desert
Storm Personnel Data Base Conference of 23-25 April 1991," May 15, 1991.
16 "Defense Manpower Data Center Support for Desert Shield/Desert Storm,"
December 1991.
17 DOD Instruction 1336.5.
On October 4, 2001, the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and
Readiness (USD (P&R)),18 issued a memorandum19 that required the services
to report personnel information to DMDC on all active and reserve
component personnel mobilized or deployed in support of GWOT, in
accordance with DOD guidance.20 The purpose of GWOT data was, among other
things, to establish eligibility for benefits and entitlements as a result
of participation in the named contingencies.21 The information is critical
because it provides a historical database with which to assess the impact
of policies and processes, events, and exposures on the health of deployed
reserve component servicemembers. DMDC was tasked with providing reporting
guidance to the services for these data submissions. DMDC sent this
guidance to the services on October 12, 2001.
DMDC is a civilian-led agency with a mission to deliver timely and quality
support to its customers, and to ensure that data received from different
sources are consistent, accurate, and appropriate when used to respond to
inquiries. DMDC reports to the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for
Program Integration, who is in the Office of the USD (P&R) (see fig. 1).
18 The Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness is the
principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary of Defense and the
Deputy Secretary of Defense, Total Force Management, as relates to
readiness, National Guard and Reserve component affairs, health affairs,
and personnel requirements and management.
19 Department of Defense, the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and
Readiness, memorandum, "Reporting of Personnel Data in Support of the
National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks," October 4,
2001.
20 DOD Instruction 1336.5.
21 The data are also used for research, actuarial analyses, interagency,
mobilization and contingency reporting, and evaluation of DOD programs and
policies.
Figure 1: Organizational Hierarchy for DOD's Defense Manpower Data Center
In February 2002, USD (P&R) reminded the services in another memorandum of
its earlier requirement for reporting personnel data to DMDC and informed
the services that they had 2 weeks to provide plans to DMDC on how they
were going to correct any personnel data reporting problems. On August 6,
2004, DOD updated prior guidance regarding RCCPDS22 to include an
enclosure23 that set out specific requirements for the services to report
personnel information for all reserve component servicemembers supporting
a named contingency, unlike previous guidance.24 The purpose of the new
enclosure was to ensure more accurate reporting on a named contingency,
such as GWOT missions, as well as to establish eligibility for benefits
and entitlements, and to develop a registry of participants for tracking
in support of research and evaluation of DOD programs and policies.
According to DOD officials, the services, in general, were still reporting
data according to previous guidance for a few years after the new guidance
was issued.
22 DOD Instruction 7730.54, March 15, 1999, was updated with enc. 11 on
August 6, 2004.
23 DOD Instruction 7730.54, enc. 11, August 6, 2004.
24 DOD Instruction 1336.5, enc. 5, May 2, 2001.
In August 2004, DMDC began operation of its CTS database to address DOD's
reporting requirements, including those in the new enclosure (that is,
enclosure 11). The CTS database is DOD's repository for collecting
activation, mobilization, and deployment data for reservists who have
served and continue to serve in support of GWOT. The CTS database contains
both an activation file, which contains mobilization data, and a
deployment file. Both files are updated monthly by service submissions and
cover GWOT from September 11, 2001, to the present. The purpose of the
activation file is to account for and provide medical and educational
benefits for all reservists called to active duty in support of GWOT
contingencies, and it allows DOD to provide data on the number of
reservists who have been mobilized in support of GWOT. The purpose of the
CTS deployment file is to account for a deployed servicemember's
deployment date and location during each deployment event in support of
deployment health surveillance and DOD guidance.25 The database is also
used to track and report the number of reservists who have been deployed
in support of GWOT since September 11, 2001.
DOD Data Show Demographic and Deployment Characteristics of Hundreds of
Thousands of Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that more than 531,000 reservists have
been mobilized in support of GWOT and more than 378,000 reservists, or
about 71 percent of the number mobilized, have been deployed in support of
GWOT through June 30, 2006 (see fig. 2). The Army National Guard deployed
the greatest number of reservists in support of GWOT from September 2001
through June 30, 2006, and, of those, the majority were deployed once. The
data also indicate that the vast majority of reservists who deployed in
support of GWOT were U.S. citizens, White, and male. Further, the data
indicate that most of the reservists spent 1 year or less deployed.
DOD guidance26 requires the services to report timely, accurate, and
complete activation, mobilization,27 and deployment data. DOD guidance
also requires DMDC to collect and maintain mobilization and deployment
data from the services about the reservists. DOD is required by policy to
report personnel data about reservists, such as service, service
component, reserve component category, race, ethnicity, gender,
citizenship status, occupation, unit, and volunteer status regarding a
current mobilization.28 In addition, DOD is required by policy to capture
deployment information such as the location a reservist is deployed to and
the dates the reservist was deployed to that location.29
25 DOD Instruction 6490.03, Deployment Health, August 11, 2006.
26 DOD Instruction 7730.54 and DOD Instruction 6490.03.
27 DMDC's activation and mobilization data are contained in the CTS
activation file. For the purposes of this report, the term mobilized will
refer to reservists who have been activated, mobilized, or both in support
of GWOT.
DOD Data on Selected Demographic and Deployment Variables
Number of Reservists Mobilized and Deployed
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that more than 531,000 reservists have
been mobilized in support of GWOT and more than 378,000 reservists, or 71
percent of the number mobilized, have been deployed in support of GWOT
through June 30, 2006 (see fig. 2). The number of mobilizations and
deployments peaked in fiscal year 2003 with about 206,000 reservists
mobilized and about 127,000 reservists deployed (see figs. 3 and 4). Since
fiscal year 2003, the total number of mobilizations has declined, while
the number of deployments remained stable through fiscal year 2005. The
Army National Guard has mobilized and deployed the greatest number of
reservists-more than 230,000 mobilized and more than 163,000 deployed. The
Navy Reserve had the least number of reservists mobilized-with about
29,000-while the Marine Corps Reserve had the fewest number deployed with
about 19,000 reservists (see fig. 2). The percentage of the total
reservists mobilized or deployed varies across the fiscal years (see figs.
3 and 4). For example, looking at the percentage of mobilizations by
component each year, Navy Reserve, Air Force Reserve, and Air National
Guard mobilizations occurred early in GWOT and have generally declined
over time. Conversely, the percentage of Army National Guard and Army
Reserve mobilizations has generally increased over time. The greatest
number of Army National Guard deployments-more than 60,000-occurred in
fiscal year 2005 (see table 5 totals in app. II), while also in fiscal
year 2005, the Army National Guard represented the largest deploying
component, with 52 percent of deployments belonging to it (see fig. 4).
28 DOD Instruction 7730.54.
29 DOD Instruction 6490.03.
Figure 2: Reservists Mobilized and Deployed in Support of the Global War
on Terrorism through June 30, 2006
Note: Army mobilization data may change moderately upon completion of the
Army's rebaselining efforts with DMDC. Reservists were only counted once
to identify the total number of individuals who have been mobilized and
deployed in support of GWOT. Totals may not add to 100 percent because of
rounding.
Figure 3: Reservists Mobilized in Support of the Global War on Terrorism
by Fiscal Year through June 30, 2006
Notes: Army mobilization data may change moderately upon completion of the
Army's rebaselining efforts with DMDC. The sum of the number of reservists
mobilized for each fiscal year will be different from the total number of
reservists mobilized for all of GWOT because a reservist can be counted
more than once (that is, for each fiscal year in which he or she began a
mobilization). Totals may not add to 100 percent because of rounding.
aFiscal year 2001 data are for September 11, 2001, through September 30,
2001.
bFiscal year 2006 data are for October 1, 2005, through June 30, 2006.
Figure 4: Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on Terrorism by
Fiscal Year through June 30, 2006
Notes: The sum of the number of reservists deployed for each fiscal year
will be different from the total number of reservists deployed for all of
GWOT because a reservist can be counted more than once (that is, for each
fiscal year in which he or she began a deployment). Less than 1 percent of
reservists deployed in fiscal year 2001 were Marine Corps Reserve
servicemembers. Totals may not add to 100 percent because of rounding.
aFiscal year 2001 data are for September 11, 2001, through September 30,
2001.
bFiscal year 2006 data are for October 1, 2005, through June 30, 2006.
Number of Reservists Who Have Deployed One, Two, or Three or More Times
Although reservists usually deployed only once, some experienced multiple
deployments (see fig. 5). For example, compared to the other reserve
components, the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve had nearly
half of their reservists deploying two and three or more times, but they
tend to have shorter deployment cycles according to the Air Expeditionary
Force cycle. Under this cycle, reservists deploy for about 120 days in a
20-month cycle. However, servicemembers assigned to stressed specialties
deploy for longer periods of time and in greater frequency. At the unit
level, some deployment rules have been modified to increase volunteerism
or to add stability to key missions. The Army National Guard and the
Marine Corps Reserve had the lowest percentage of reservists deploying two
and three or more times, but they tend to have longer deployment cycles.
In general, DOD policy30 stipulates that Army units spend 1 year "boots on
the ground" in theater.31 This policy also states that Marine Corps units
below the regimental or group level deploy for 7 months while regimental
and group headquarters units and above deploy for 12 months. This policy
also states that the Chief of Naval Operations' goal is for servicemembers
to have a 6-month deployment with 12 months in a nondeployed status.
30 Department of Defense, Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and
Readiness, "Action Memorandum: Force Deployment Rules for Operations Iraqi
Freedom and Enduring Freedom," July 30, 2004.
31 "Boots on the ground" is defined in a DOD action memo issued July 30,
2004, as the window of time from when a unit physically arrives in theater
until the unit physically departs from the theater. In addition to time
spent "boots on the ground," Army servicemembers usually have a period
prior to mobilization in which they train at a mobilization station and a
time following deployment where they demobilize.
Figure 5: Percentage of Reservists Who Have Deployed One, Two, or Three or
More Times in Support of the Global War on Terrorism through June 30, 2006
Notes: For the Marine Corps Reserve, very few reservists-less than 1
percent-served three or more deployments. Totals may not add to 100
percent because of rounding.
Number of Reservists Who Have Spent 1 Year or Less, 1 to 2 Years, or More Than
2 Years Deployed in Support of GWOT
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that across the services, the majority
of reservists have been deployed once, and of those deployed in support of
GWOT, most-about 307,000 reservists, or 81 percent-have spent a year or
less deployed. Alternatively, more than 65,000 reservists, or 17 percent,
have spent more than 1 year but less than 2 years deployed, and about
6,000 reservists, or fewer than 2 percent, have spent more than 2 years
deployed. The data also indicate that the Marine Corps Reserve had the
highest percentage of reservists serving more than 2 years. In addition,
the data also indicate that very few-less than 1 percent-of Air National
Guard reservists served more than 2 years (see fig. 6).
Figure 6: Percentage of Reservists Who Have Spent 1 Year or Less, 1 to 2
Years, or More Than 2 Years Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism through June 30, 2006
Notes: For the Air National Guard, very few reservists-less than 1
percent-served more than 2 years. Totals may not add to 100 percent
because of rounding.
Reserve Component Categories for Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that most reservists who have deployed
in support of GWOT through June 30, 2006, were members of the Selected
Reserve (see fig. 7 and table 5 in app. II). The majority of units and
individuals in each reserve component are part of the Selected Reserve.
These units and individuals have been designated as so essential to the
initial wartime mission that they have priority for training, equipment,
and personnel over all categories of reservists. Congress authorizes end
strength for Selected Reserve personnel each year. The authorized end
strength for the Army National Guard has been about 350,000 for the past
several years. For fiscal year 2005, data provided by the services to DMDC
indicate that the Army National Guard deployed more than 60,000 Selected
Reserve servicemembers, which represents the highest number of Selected
Reserve servicemembers deployed in a single fiscal year by a single
reserve component since GWOT began.
Figure 7: Percentage of Reservists Deployed in the Selected Reserve in
Support of the Global War on Terrorism through June 30, 2006
Although the services are authorized a maximum number of selected
reservists, the actual number of reservists will fluctuate when additional
reservists are recruited or others leave the reserve component. In
addition, reservists such as those in the Individual Ready Reserve, are
also available for deployment. In general, reservists are trained to have
specific skills and specialties and may not be suited to deploy for a
specific mission until additional training is provided. In addition, some
reservists may not be available for deployment because they are in
training, on medical leave, or awaiting training.
Citizenship Status of Reservists at the Time of Their Most Current Deployment
in Support of GWOT
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that almost 98 percent of reservists
who have deployed in support of GWOT through June 30, 2006, were U.S.
citizens at the time of their most current deployment (see fig. 8). The
data indicate that about 1 percent of reservists were non-U.S. citizens or
non-nationals at the time of their most current deployment. The
citizenship status of more than 1,400 reservists was unknown. DOD data
also indicate that 168 reservists' citizenship status changed. Table 1
shows the citizenship status of reservists by reserve component by fiscal
year.
Figure 8: Citizenship Status of Reservists at the Time of Their Most
Current Deployment in Support of the Global War on Terrorism through June
30, 2006
Note: Totals may not add to 100 percent because of rounding.
aU.S. nationals are non-U.S. citizens who owe permanent allegiance to the
United States, such as persons born in American Samoa or Swains Island.
Table 1: Citizenship Status of Reservists Deployed in Support of the
Global War on Terrorism by Fiscal Year through June 30, 2006
Fiscal year
2001a 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006b
Army U.S. citizen 3,622 6,868 40,083 47,477 59,513 23,542
National
Guard
U.S. national 0 0 0 0 0 0
Non-U.S. 25 54 288 440 708 273
citizen or
non-national
Unknown 0 0 1 0 0 0
Air U.S. citizen 1,469 18,935 21,967 13,086 12,259 9,497
National U.S. 53 576 633 381 359 376
Guard national
Non-U.S. 0 3 0 9 11 9
citizen or
non-national
Unknown 0 1 5 3 1 0
Army U.S. citizen 1,158 3,749 35,401 28,793 24,316 12,948
Reserve U.S. 0 0 6 4 4 0
national
Non-U.S. 17 77 766 588 473 201
citizen or
non-national
Unknown 6 1,379 72 89 84 31
Navy U.S. citizen 235 2,464 5,349 5,192 5,168 5,554
Reserve U.S. 0 6 15 9 14 9
national
Non-U.S. 2 23 84 91 77 131
citizen or
non-national
Unknown 8 87 207 222 158 149
Marine U.S. citizen 8 1,252 9,440 5,697 3,177 895
Corps U.S. 0 1 33 14 15 0
Reserve national
Non-U.S. 0 98 479 148 107 34
citizen or
non-national
Unknown 0 0 0 0 0 0
Air U.S. citizen 508 11,630 11,795 8,927 8,407 6,469
Force U.S. 0 0 0 0 0 0
Reserve national
Non-U.S. 0 5 4 6 6 7
citizen or
non-national
Unknown 0 2 4 3 0 0
Total 7,111 47,210 126,632 111,179 114,857 60,125
Source: GAO analysis of DOD data.
Note: Reservists can be counted more than once if they deployed more than
once in different fiscal years.
aFiscal year 2001 data are for September 11, 2001, through September 30,
2001.
bFiscal year 2006 data are for October 1, 2005, through June 30, 2006.
Race and Ethnicity for Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that about 78 percent of those deployed
for GWOT were White; about 14 percent were Black or African American;
about 2 percent were Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander;
and about 1 percent were American Indian or Alaskan Native (see table 2).
Overall, about 5 percent of the deployed reservists declined to indicate
their race. The Army National Guard, the Air National Guard, and the Air
Force Reserve had the highest percentages of the reservists who identified
themselves as White. Further, about 90 percent of those who responded
identified themselves as non-Hispanic and 8 percent as Hispanic (see table
3).
Table 2: Race of Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism through June 30, 2006
Army Air Marine Air
National National Army Navy Corps Force
Guard Guard Reserve Reserve Reserve Reserve Total
White 131,686 44,759 66,609 13,905 14,096 23,432 294,487
Black or African 21,285 3,384 19,541 2,611 1,543 3,191 51,555
American
Asian/Native 2,794 592 3,318 492 292 307 7,795
Hawaiian or
other Pacific
Islander
American 1,193 471 497 138 130 122 2,551
Indian/Alaska
Native
More than one 0 132 0 1,981 64 85 2,262
race
Declined to 6,586 1,836 5,127 1,288 3,163 1,632 19,632
respond
Total 163,544 51,174 95,092 20,415 19,288 28,769 378,282
Source: GAO analysis of DOD data.
Note: Although the1997 governmentwide requirements for the collection and
reporting of information on race and ethnicity were to have been
implemented by January 1, 2003, DOD has not yet fully implemented the
requirements and its internal monthly reports continue to use some of the
former racial and ethnic categories.
Table 3: Ethnicity of Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism through June 30, 2006
Army Air Marine Air
National National Army Navy Corps Force
Guard Guard Reserve Reserve Reserve Reserve Total
Non-Hispanic 152,350 48,497 84,498 15,003 11,531 26,970 338,849
Hispanic 11,193 2,579 10,465 1,851 3,054 1,699 30,841
Unknown 1 98 129 3,561 4,703 100 8,592
Total 163,544 51,174 95,092 20,415 19,288 28,769 378,282
Source: GAO analysis of DOD data.
Gender of Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that about 338,000 reservists, or about
89 percent of the number deployed, were male (see table 4). About 11
percent of those deployed in support of GWOT were female. Of the
approximately 163,500 Army National Guard servicemembers who have been
deployed through June 30, 2006, more than 92 percent were male. Almost 98
percent of those deployed in support of GWOT through June 30, 2006, for
the Marine Corps Reserve were male, representing the highest percentage of
males compared with females for all of the reserve components.
Table 4: Gender of Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism by Reserve Component through June 30, 2006
Army Air Air
National National Army Navy Marine Corps Force
Guard Guard Reserve Reserve Reserve Reserve Total
Male 150,633 45,674 79,799 17,897 18,806 25,044 337,853
Female 12,910 5,500 15,276 2,518 482 3,725 40,411
Unknown 1 0 17 0 0 0 18
Total 163,544 51,174 95,092 20,415 19,288 28,769 378,282
Source: GAO analysis of DOD data.
State of Residence of Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that California, Texas, Pennsylvania,
and Florida had the highest numbers of reservists who have deployed in
support of GWOT through June 2006 (see table 6 in app. II for the number
of reservists deployed by state of residence by reserve component by
fiscal year). The 4 states combined had more than 76,000 reservists in
residence at the time of their deployments. Eleven states deployed more
than 10,000 reservists each, accounting for more than 160,000 reservist
deployments. Of those deployed, about 39 percent came from states in the
southern United States, about 23 percent from the midwest, about 18
percent from states in the western United States, and about 15 percent
came from states in the northeast part of the country.32 More than 20,000
reservists indicated California or Texas as their state of residence at
the time they were deployed (see fig. 9). Nineteen states and 5
territories had fewer than 5,000 reservists in residence at the time of
their deployment and 20 states and 1 territory had from 5,000 to 9,999
reservists in residence at the time of their deployment.
32 Totals may not add to 100 percent because of rounding and because we
did not include the percentage for territories or Armed Forces areas.
Figure 9: Number of Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on
Terrorism by State through June 30, 2006
Occupational Information about Enlisted and Officer Reservists Deployed in
Support of GWOT
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that since GWOT began, the occupational
areas33 of enlisted reservists deployed in support of GWOT have stayed
somewhat consistent across all services. For example, the Army National
Guard, the Air Force Reserve, and the Marine Corps Reserve have deployed
reservists mostly in infantry occupational areas including such groups as
infantry, air crew, and combat engineering. All six reserve components
have deployed electrical and mechanical equipment repairers, such as
automotive, aircraft, and armament and munitions. Three of the six reserve
components-the Army National Guard, the Army Reserve, and the Marine Corps
Reserve-have deployed reservists who are service and supply handlers, such
as law enforcement and motor transport.
Since GWOT began, the occupational areas most deployed for reserve
component officers have varied, but all reserve components primarily
deployed tactical operations officers, to include ground and naval arms,
helicopter pilots, and operations staff subgroups. The Army National
Guard, the Air National Guard, and the Navy Reserve have deployed
engineering and maintenance officers, such as the communications and radar
and aviation maintenance occupational subgroups. The Air National Guard,
the Army Reserve, and the Air Force Reserve have deployed reservists in
the health care officer occupational areas, including physicians and
nurses. The Army Reserve and the Marine Corps Reserve have deployed supply
and procurement occupational areas that include transportation, general
logistics, and supply occupational subgroups. The Air Force Reserve has
also deployed intelligence officers in occupational subgroups such as
general intelligence and counterintelligence.
Data for the Volunteer Status, Location Deployed, and Unit Deployed Variables
Were Either Not Available or Not Reliable
We were unable to analyze the volunteer status variable because the data
do not exist for all of the reserve components. Similarly, we were unable
to analyze the deployment location and deployment unit variables because
we determined, in agreement with DMDC officials, that the data in these
fields were not reliable. This issue is discussed further below.
33 Occupational areas, groups, and subgroups are defined by DOD's
Occupational Database. Examples given represent DOD's areas, occupational
groups or subgroups.
DOD and the Services Have Taken Steps to Improve the Reliability of Reserve
Component Data, but More Needs to Be Done
While we found selected deployment and mobilization data to be
sufficiently reliable for our purposes (that is, providing descriptive
data), some of the data were not reliable enough for us to report, even
for descriptive purposes. DMDC and the services, as required by DOD
policy, have taken steps to improve the reliability of the mobilization
data; however, more action is needed to improve the reliability of CTS
data and DMDC's analyses of those data. For example, (1) the rebaselining
effort resulted in substantial changes being made to the mobilization
data, and the Army-which has mobilized and deployed the largest number of
reservists for GWOT-has not completed this rebaselining effort, which the
Joint Staff tasked DMDC and the services to do in November 2005; (2) we
identified data issues that DOD has not addressed that could further
improve the reliability of the data, such as standardizing the use of key
terms like deployment; and (3) DMDC does not have effective controls for
ensuring the accuracy of its data analyses used to produce reports as
required by federal government internal control standards. Although DMDC
and DOD have undertaken a major data cleaning-or rebaselining-effort to
improve the reliability of mobilization data, the effort does not address
some fundamental data quality issues. While we recognize that such a
large-scale effort, although replete with challenges, is a positive step
toward better quality data, if data reporting requirements and definitions
are not uniform, and if there are no quality reviews of DMDC's analyses,
some data elements and DMDC's analyses of those data may continue to be
unreliable. A senior DMDC official stated that it emphasizes getting data
to customers in a timely manner rather than documenting the internal
control procedures needed to improve the reliability of the data and the
data analyses produced. However, with proper internal controls, DMDC could
potentially achieve both timeliness and accuracy. Without reliable data
and analyses, DOD cannot make sound data-driven decisions about reserve
force availability. Moreover, DOD may not be able to link reservists'
locations with exposure to medical hazards.
DMDC and the Services Are Updating the Mobilization Data in CTS, but Concerns
Remain
We have found the deployment and mobilization data we used to be
sufficiently reliable for our purposes (that is, providing descriptive
data), and DMDC and the services have recently taken steps to improve the
reliability of mobilization data. However, additional steps are needed to
make mobilization data more reliable. As previously noted, DOD guidance34
requires the services to report timely, accurate, and complete activation,
mobilization,35 and deployment data. DMDC officials responsible for
overseeing the CTS database stated that a rebaseline of the deployment
data was not necessary because the deployment data matched the data in the
Defense Finance and Accounting Service's (DFAS) systems36 by more than 98
percent. Although DMDC and the services rebaselining of the mobilization
data in CTS has resulted in improvements, the Army, which has mobilized
the greatest number of reservists for GWOT, has not completed its
rebaselining effort. A senior-level DMDC official responsible for
overseeing the CTS database said that the mobilization data in the CTS
database prior to the rebaselining effort were less than 80 percent
accurate for the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, but that the Marine
Corps' data were generally considered to be accurate prior to the
rebaselining effort. The official also stated that DMDC expects that the
mobilization data within the CTS database will be 90 percent accurate
because of this rebaselining effort, which was still ongoing through
August 2006. While we recognize that this is a considerable undertaking,
to date, only the Navy and the Air Force have validated or certified their
mobilization data files. Navy officials said that the Navy has validated
its personnel records and established a common baseline of data with DMDC.
Air Force Reserve officials said that their data within CTS are now 99 to
100 percent accurate. The Chief of the Personnel Data Systems Division for
the Air National Guard certified that although file discrepancies are
still being reconciled, the data that were processed by DMDC on June 11,
2006, were the most accurate activation37 data and that data accuracy will
improve with each future file sent to DMDC. The DMDC official said that
the Marine Corps had only partially completed its rebaselining effort and
would not be finished until the Marine Corps provided its August 2006 data
file in September 2006. The Army National Guard and Army Reserve are still
working to rebaseline their mobilization data, and the Army has not
provided a time frame for completing the effort.
34 DOD Instruction 7730.54 and DOD Instruction 6490.03.
However, we still have concerns regarding the reliability of the
mobilization data, because the scope of the rebaselining effort changed
and the data changed substantially as a result of the rebaselining. At the
beginning of our review, DMDC and the services referred to the
rebaselining effort as a "reconciliation," which, according to a DMDC
official and a Reserve Affairs official, would have resulted in all data
(current and past) being reviewed and corrected as needed. We acknowledge
that some degree of change is expected in any data cleaning effort,
especially with large-scale, multisource collection methods such as DMDC's
data collection process. However, our experience has shown that cleaning
efforts that result in a large degree of change would suggest systematic
error. Such error raises concerns about the reliability of both the
original data and the "cleaned" data. If both the source data and the
cleaned data are populated with the same assumptions and information, any
reconciliation of data points should result in relatively small change
that correct simply for random error, such as from keypunch or data source
errors. However, for some variables, the data changed substantially as a
result of DMDC and the services' rebaselining or data cleaning effort. Our
analysis shows that data from the period of September 2001 through
December 2005 have changed by about 4 percent to as much as 20 percent.
For example:
35 DMDC's activation and mobilization data are contained in the CTS
activation file. For the purposes of this report, the term mobilized will
refer to reservists who have been activated, mobilized, or both in support
of GWOT.
36 The DFAS systems contain data on special pays and allowances provided
to servicemembers including combat zone tax exclusions and imminent danger
pay.
37 For this report, Air Force activation data are the same as mobilization
data.
o The number of reservists mobilized for GWOT through December
2005 went from about 478,000 to about 506,000-an increase of more
than 27,000 reservists or a change of more than 5 percent.
o The Army Reserve data sustained the greatest change during this
time with a more than 19 percent increase in the number of
reservists mobilized. The number of mobilized Army National Guard
reservists increased more than 7 percent. According to a senior
DMDC official, the Army data are expected to continue to change,
perhaps substantially enough to require the rebaselining of the
data again in the future.
o The number of Air National Guard reservists mobilized decreased
by more than 13 percent.
o The Navy Reserve, the Marine Corps Reserve, and the Air Force
Reserve data all changed about 5 percent.
DOD officials stated that the rebaselining effort occurred because
the Joint Staff tasked DMDC and the services with ensuring that
the data the Joint Staff's Manpower and Personnel office was using
in CTS were the same data as the services were using to determine
reserve force availability. According to a senior-level DMDC
official responsible for overseeing CTS, the rebaselining effort's
scope changed because all of the services agreed that starting
over and replacing all of the data would make more sense than
trying to correct transactions already in CTS, because the
services found errors in the CTS files initially used for the
reconciliation. Service officials said that some of the data
discrepancies developed because of a DMDC quality check procedure
that sometimes resulted in DMDC replacing the service-submitted
data with data from other sources. DMDC officials said that they
did this because the services were unable to report some of the
required CTS data. According to DMDC officials, service
submissions have become more complete over time, resulting in DMDC
now using the quality check procedures only to check the data
rather than to populate the CTS database. This DMDC official
stated that DMDC expected the data to change substantially based
on the issues identified with service data during the initial
reconciliation effort and the subsequent rebaselining effort.
Because the rebaselining effort is not complete and the Army-which
has mobilized and deployed the largest number of reservists for
GWOT-has not finished the rebaselining, we do not know how much
the data will continue to change as DMDC and the services work to
finish this effort. DOD data on reservists' mobilizations and
deployments are important because decision makers at DOD and in
Congress need the data to make sound decisions about personnel
issues and for planning and budgeting purposes.
DOD Has Not Fully Addressed Data Issues That Could Improve Data
Reliability
Prior to the rebaselining effort, some services recognized that
there were data issues that needed to be addressed and took steps
to do so, as DOD guidance38 requires the services to report
accurate and complete mobilization and deployment data. However,
some data issues that would ensure more accurate, complete, and
consistent mobilization and deployment data across the services in
the future have not been fully addressed by DOD. Some examples of
data issues being addressed include the following:
o The Air Force and the Navy were having difficulty tracking
mobilizations based on reservists' mobilization orders, which has
resulted in both services independently working to develop and
implement systems that write reservists' orders.
o The Army Reserve recently began to modify its mobilization
systems, which Army officials expect will improve the collection
of reservists' mobilization data.
o The Air Force identified problems with the way in which the
Defense Eligibility Enrollment Reporting System (DEERS) processed
end dates for reservists' mobilizations, which resulted in some
reservists not receiving appropriate benefits (for example, dental
benefits). Air Force officials worked with officials from the
Office of the Secretary of Defense and DMDC to identify and
address the data processing logic issues.
Despite these positive steps, service process improvements are not
all complete, and further, there has been no comprehensive review
across DOD to identify data issues that if addressed, could result
in more complete, accurate, and consistent mobilization and
deployment data across and within the services. Reserve Affairs
officials in the office of Reserve Systems Integration said that a
more sustainable fix to the processes of collecting data is needed
to ensure that data captured in the future are accurate and more
efficiently collected. We agree and have identified some issues
that may continue to affect data reliability, such as the
following:
o The use of terms, such as activated, mobilized, and deployed,
has not been standardized across the services. Although the
department has defined these terms in the Department of Defense
Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, the terms are used
differently by the individual services. In the Air Force,
"activation" can refer to the time when a reservist either
volunteers or is involuntarily mobilized; however, the term
"mobilized" refers only to someone who is not a volunteer. Even
within a single service, these words can have different meanings.
For example, an Army National Guard official who participated in
the rebaselining effort said that Army National Guard
servicemembers who backfill active duty servicemembers are not
considered deployed since they have not left the United States.
However, according to this official, some staff in the Army
National Guard use "deployed" to include reservists who are
mobilized within the United States.
o There is no single data entry process that would minimize the
potential for contradictory data about reservists in multiple
systems. Currently, data about reservists are entered separately
into multiple systems.
o There is no mechanism for DMDC to ensure that the services are
addressing the data inconsistencies DMDC identifies during its
ongoing, monthly validation process, such as Social Security
numbers that are duplicated in two reserve components.
o DOD has taken an ad hoc, episodic approach to identifying data
reporting requirements and to addressing data issues. DOD has
periodically issued policies regarding its need to collect and
report specific data, such as volunteer status and location
deployed, about active duty servicemembers and reservists. As a
result of changing requirements, many of these policies have
addendums that include these additional data requirements, which
are not immediately supported by the services' existing systems
that are used to collect the data. Over time, this has led to
disjointed policies that overlap and that require the services to
modify their existing systems and processes, which can take months
to complete.
o There are incomplete data submissions across the services.
Specifically, data for volunteer status was not available in CTS
for all service components, and the location deployed and
deploying unit data were not reliable enough for the purposes of
this report. Only three of the six reserve components-the Air
National Guard, the Marine Corps Reserve, and the Air Force
Reserve-provide information on a reservist's volunteer status,
which neither we nor DMDC report because it is not available for
all six components. Further, DMDC officials said that they
consider CTS location data incomplete although the data are
improving with each fiscal year. DMDC officials said that most
unit information is based on the unit a reservist is assigned to
and may not represent the unit the reservist is currently deployed
with in theater. For this reason, we did not consider these data
reliable enough to report.
A DMDC official stated that DMDC does not have the authority to
direct the services to correct data errors or inconsistencies or
to address data issues. DMDC does, however, work with the services
and tries to identify and address data challenges. According to
some service officials, the department plans to implement a new,
integrated payroll and personnel system-Defense Integrated
Military Human Resource System (DIMHRS)-and that the services have
been diverting resources needed to modify their existing systems
and relevant processes to support DIMHRS. However, our past work
has shown that DOD has encountered a number of challenges with
DIMHRS, which is behind schedule, and the current schedule has it
available no sooner than April 2008, when the Army is scheduled to
begin implementing the system.
In general, service officials said that they are working to
collect data on volunteer status, location deployed, and deploying
unit; however, Air Force officials stated that they do collect
data on location deployed and deploying unit and that these data
are accurate and are being provided to DMDC. Army Reserve
officials stated that they currently do not have plans to collect
data on volunteer status.
DMDC Does Not Have Effective Controls for Ensuring the Accuracy of
Its Data Analyses Used to Produce Reports
DMDC has not documented (1) its procedures for verifying that the
data analyses it performs are correct and (2) the procedures for
monthly validation of service data or the procedures used to
perform analyses of data. Either of these issues could, if
documented as part of DMDC's verification process, address some of
our concerns about internal controls. DMDC is required by policy39
to develop and produce reports about mobilization data and respond
to requests for information about deployed personnel. DOD policy40
requires DMDC and the reserve components to ensure the accuracy of
files and the resulting reports. Federal government internal
control standards41 require that data control activities, such as
edit checks, verifications, and reconciliations, be conducted and
documented to help provide reasonable assurance that agency
objectives are being met.
DMDC officials said that they have internal verification
procedures that require supervisors to review all data analyses
used to generate reports, although these procedures are not
documented. Specifically, the supervisors are to review (1) the
statistical programming code used to generate the data analyses to
ensure that the code includes the customer's data analyses
parameters (that is, the assumptions used to produce the analyses)
and (2) the "totals" generated to ensure that these totals match
the control totals that show the number of reservists currently or
ever mobilized or deployed in support of GWOT. DMDC officials
acknowledge the importance of verifying the accuracy of the data
analyses prior to providing the reports to customers, and they
stated that they had verified the accuracy of the analyses
provided to us. However, we found numerous errors in the initial
and subsequent analyses we received of the GWOT data through May
2006, causing us to question whether DMDC verified the data
analyses it provided to us and, if it did, whether the current
process is adequate. For example, we found that DMDC had done the
following:
o Counted reservists with more than one deployment during GWOT
also among those who deployed only once during GWOT, which
resulted in overcounting the number of reservists' deployments.
o Used ethnicity responses to identify race despite having told
us that the internal policy was changed in 2006 and that this was
no longer an acceptable practice.
o Counted reservists whose ethnicity was "unknown" as
"non-Hispanic" although "unknown" does not necessarily mean
someone's ethnicity is "non-Hispanic" and there was a category for
unknowns.
o Repeatedly categorized data based on a reservist's first
deployment (when there was more than one) despite agreeing to
modify this analytical assumption so that we could present data by
the reservist's most current deployment.
o Reported thousands of reservists as having changed citizenship
status during GWOT although, in our analyses, we found that only
168 reservists had changed status.
o Analyzed data by reserve component categories (for example,
Selected Reserve and Individual Ready Reserve) rather than by
reserve component as we had asked. By analyzing the number of days
a reservist was deployed by reserve component category, a
reservist could be counted multiple times within one component if
he or she changed category. This error affected the way in which
the total number of days a reservist was deployed was calculated.
For example, if the same reservist served 350 days as an Army
National Guard Selected Reserve member and an additional 350 days
as an Army National Guard Individual Ready Reserve member, he or
she would be counted as two reservists who were each deployed for
less than a year. However, our intent was to report that the same
individual had been deployed for a total of 700 days. In our
analysis, all of a reservist's days deployed were totaled and
counted once for each reserve component, regardless of which
category he or she belonged to when deployed.
o Miscoded the end date for the analysis of how many days
reservists were deployed for GWOT. This resulted in up to an
additional 90 days of deployment being counted for reservists who
were still deployed at the time the data were submitted to DMDC.
In our discussions with DMDC officials, they readily acknowledged
that errors had been made, although they stated that the analyses
had undergone supervisory review prior to our receiving them.
During these discussions, we also discovered that many of these
errors occurred because DMDC had not used all of our data analyses
parameters, although these officials had stated that this was one
of the verification process steps followed. Although we were able
to work with DMDC officials and identify the analytical
assumptions they were going to use to complete our analyses,
without documented analytical procedures, it is unclear to what
degree the analyses DMDC provides to other users of the data also
contain errors since many may not similarly verify the analyses
provided to them by DMDC.
In addition, DMDC officials have not documented additional
processes that would further support a verification process, such
as (1) the ongoing, monthly validation process of service-provided
data42 and (2) the procedures to perform analyses and generate
reports, including the assumptions DMDC uses when producing
periodic and special reports for customers. In the past, according
to the services, the ongoing, monthly validation process DMDC used
resulted in two sets of data-one set of service data and one set
of DMDC data-that may not have been the same. For example, we were
told by the Air Force that, in some cases, service data were
replaced with default values because of a business rule that DMDC
applied to the data and that this change resulted in errors to the
service-provided data. These inconsistent data caused the Joint
Staff to request that the services and DMDC reconcile the data. As
stated above, there were errors in the analyses performed to
generate the reports DMDC provided to us, including DMDC's not
using many of the assumptions we agreed to for the analyses. DMDC
also made errors that contradicted its own undocumented policy.
A senior DMDC official said DMDC has not documented these
procedures because the organization emphasizes getting data and
reports to its customers in a timely manner rather than preparing
this documentation. This official said that documentation is not a
top priority because situations change rapidly, and it would be
hard to keep these documents up-to-date. The official also said
that the errors made in the analyses provided to us were caused by
human error and the need to provide data quickly. Further, the
DMDC official said that while there are standard data requests
that are generated frequently, GAO's request was an ad hoc
request, and the procedures for addressing such requests, in
practice, are not as well defined. While we agree that our
requests met DMDC's definition of an ad hoc request, we disagree
that sufficient time was not allowed for DMDC to prepare the
analyses. For the initial request, we worked with DMDC over the
course of about 5 business days to define the analytical
assumptions that would be used during the analysis. DMDC then took
about 8 business days to complete the analysis and provide it to
us.
DOD data analyses are important because decision makers at DOD and
in Congress need the data to make sound decisions about reserve
force availability, medical surveillance, and planning and
budgeting. In the absence of documented procedures and the
necessary controls to ensure that they are implemented, it is
difficult for an organization to ensure that it has established a
robust process that is being consistently applied and that
accurate results are being achieved. Joint Staff and Reserve
Affairs officials are emphasizing the need to use one data source
for most analyses to further reduce the inconsistencies in data
analyses because service-produced analyses and DMDC-produced
analyses could differ if both are not using the same set of data
and assumptions. Otherwise, it is possible that the data analyses
provided to decision makers at DOD or in Congress will be
incomplete and inconsistent. If the data analyses are incorrect,
users could draw erroneous conclusions based on the data, which
could lead to policies that affect reservists in unanticipated
ways.
Conclusions
DOD recognizes the need for accurate, complete, and consistent
data and data analyses, and it has taken some preliminary, ad hoc
steps to improve its data, including undertaking a considerable
effort to rebaseline its mobilization data. It has not, however,
addressed some of the inconsistencies in data and data analyses
departmentwide, such as when terms are used differently from one
service to the next. Further, service officials stated that it is
anticipated that a lot of these problems will be addressed when
DIMHRS is implemented. However, the schedule for DIMHRS continues
to slip, so it is unclear when this solution will be available. We
recognize that the need for accurate, complete, and consistent
data and data analyses about reservist mobilization and deployment
is always important, and even more so during higher levels of
mobilization and deployment, such as is the case now with GWOT.
This is especially true since, in general, there are restrictions
on the maximum length of time a reservist can be involuntarily
activated. Thus, having accurate and complete data on a
reservist's status is critical for determining availability for
future deployments. This is especially true of the CTS data since
the Manpower and Personnel office in the Joint Staff and the
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs
mostly use the data found in CTS. These data also help DOD and
Congress to understand the potential impacts of policy decisions
as they relate to reservists who are eligible for TRICARE Reserve
Select and educational benefits based on the number of days a
reservist is deployed. DOD has not provided guidance to the
services to better define and standardize the use of key terms.
DOD also has not collected and maintained all essential data nor
has it established a process for ensuring that data
inconsistencies are resolved. Further, DOD has not documented key
procedures and processes for verifying the data analyses it
provides to its customers, thus compromising its ability to ensure
the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of these analyses.
Until decision makers in DOD and Congress have accurate, complete,
and consistent data and analyses, they will not be in the best
position to make informed decisions about the myriad of reserve
deployment matters.
Recommendations for Executive Action
We recommend that the Secretary of Defense take the following four
actions:
o Direct the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness,
to provide guidance to the services to better define and
standardize the use of key terms, like activation, mobilization,
and deployment, to promote the completeness, accuracy, and
consistency of the data within CTS.
o Direct the service secretaries to (1) take the steps necessary
to provide all required data to DMDC, such as volunteer status and
location deployed, and (2) have the services address data
inconsistencies identified by DMDC.
o Direct the service secretaries to establish the needed
protocols to have the services report data consistent with the
guidance above.
o Direct the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness,
to require DMDC to document its internal procedures and processes,
including the assumptions it uses in data analyses. In doing this,
the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness, should
collaborate on the reasonableness of the assumptions established
and used by DMDC in its data analyses with the Office of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs and the Joint
Staff.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation
The Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness, provided
written comments on a draft of this report and stated that we
changed one of our original audit objectives and did not inform
the department of this change. We disagree. While the scope of our
audit did change after our initial notification letter of June 17,
2005, was sent to DOD, we notified the proper officials of this
change in a December 2, 2005, email to the agency-designated
liaison within the DOD Inspector General's office. In this email,
we specifically said that we would be contacting DMDC and that we
would be focusing on data for reserve component activation,
mobilization, and deployment for GWOT. In accordance with
generally accepted government auditing standards (GAGAS),43 GAO
analysts are expected, as appropriate, to review an agency's
internal controls as they relate to the scope of the performance
audit. Specifically, we are required by GAGAS44 to review the
reliability of the data and the data analyses provided to us. To
assess the reliability of data and data analyses, we often review
an agency's internal controls that are put in place to ensure the
accuracy of the data and analyses. As we discuss in our report, we
found the data to be sufficiently reliable for our purposes.
However, over the course of the work, the analyses of the data
DMDC provided to us continued to have errors. This raised concerns
about the adequacy of DMDC's internal controls for preparing and
verifying these analyses, which DMDC stated were not documented.
In accordance with GAGAS, when reporting on the results of their
work, auditors are responsible for disclosing all material or
significant facts known to them which, if not disclosed, could
mislead knowledgeable users or misrepresent the results.
Consistent errors in DMDC's analyses led us to include an audit
objective on the reliability of the data and the data analyses.
In its written comments, DOD generally concurred with three of our
recommendations and did not concur with one of our
recommendations. DOD also provided technical comments, which we
have incorporated in the report, as appropriate. Regarding our
recommendation that DOD provide guidance to the services to better
define and standardize the use of key terms, DOD stated that this
requirement has already been addressed because these terms are
defined. We acknowledged in our draft report that these key terms
are defined in the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military
and Associated Terms. However, as we state in our report, our
audit work indicates that the services are not operationalizing
the use of the terms in a consistent manner. The intent of our
recommendation is to have DOD standardize the use of the key terms
across the services.
DOD generally concurred with our recommendation that the services
provide all required data to DMDC and address data
inconsistencies, and stated that the services have been directed
to provide all necessary data and are working to address data
inconsistencies. While we agree that the services are working with
DMDC to address data inconsistencies with regard to the
rebaselining of mobilization data, we also identified other data
inconsistencies that DOD has not addressed, such as Social
Security numbers that are duplicated in more than one reserve
component. We agree with DOD that some requirements cannot be
immediately supported by service data systems and modifications to
them can take time to complete. However, as our report notes, some
service officials stated that resources are being diverted from
these efforts to the DIMHRS program, which we reported is behind
schedule. We continue to observe the need for the services to
provide all necessary data, to address these data inconsistencies,
and to establish needed protocols to have the services report data
consistent with DOD guidance, especially since the data are used
to determine reserve force availability and for medical
surveillance.
DOD also generally concurred with our recommendation that DMDC
document its internal procedures and processes, including the
assumptions it uses in data analyses. In its written comments, DOD
stated that DMDC is in the process of developing documentation on
its internal procedures and processes and has a draft that
addresses the processes used from receipt of the data from the
service components to the final quality control of the
consolidated file. DOD also stated that DMDC has a draft product
regarding many of the data analyses procedures used. During this
engagement, we asked if these procedures and processes were
documented. As we say in the report, DMDC stated that they were
undocumented and that documenting them was not a priority.
Although DOD stated that it is in the process of drafting these
procedures and processes, we were never provided a draft of these
documents. DOD also stated that while DMDC attempts to document
the assumptions made in resulting report titles and footnotes, the
disclosure of assumptions used in data analyses remain the
responsibility of the requester of the data analyses. Although we
agree that the requesters of the data bear responsibility to
disclose the analytical assumptions used in the data analyses, our
audit work indicates that there are basic assumptions that DMDC
establishes and uses that, if documented and discussed with those
who request data analyses, would allow the users to understand how
the information can be used, as well as the limitations of the
data analyses. For example, during a discussion with a Reserve
Affairs official, who uses the data analyses provided by DMDC to
provide information to senior DOD officials, we stated that DMDC
defaults to using a servicemember's first deployment rather than
the most current deployment when preparing data analyses. This
official was unaware that DMDC used this assumption and stated
that the expectation was that DMDC was using the most current
deployment to generate the analyses. This official planned to
discuss this issue with DMDC in the future.
In its written comments, DOD did not concur with what it
characterized as our fourth recommendation. Specifically, DOD
separated a single recommendation into two recommendations. In the
draft report we sent to DOD, the recommendation read: "We
recommend that the Secretary of Defense direct the Under Secretary
of Defense, Personnel and Readiness, to require DMDC to document
its internal procedures and processes, including the assumptions
it uses in data analyses. In doing this, the Under Secretary of
Defense, Personnel and Readiness, should collaborate on the
reasonableness of the assumptions used by DMDC in its data
analyses with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Reserve Affairs and the Joint Staff." DOD stated that DMDC is a
support organization that generates reports for a multitude of
organizations and that each organization that requests reports
provides the assumptions that DMDC uses to develop the reports.
However, our audit work showed that DMDC has established and uses
some basic assumptions in analyzing data and that DMDC may not
always discuss these assumptions with other DOD offices, such as
Reserve Affairs. As a result, we continue to emphasize the need
for DMDC to document these assumptions and to collaborate with
these offices to ensure a common understanding of these
assumptions. Although DOD organizations can request data analyses
using multiple assumptions, without written documentation other
organizations may not be fully aware of the analytical assumptions
used by DMDC and this may lead to miscommunication and,
ultimately, the data analyses may not be valid in that it does not
report what the user intended. We continue to believe that the
assumptions used need to be documented and discussed with other
DOD offices as we recommended. Based on DOD's comments, we
modified this recommendation to clarify our intent.
We are sending copies of this report to the Secretary of Defense;
the Secretaries of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force; the
Commandant of the Marine Corps; the Under Secretary of Defense,
Personnel and Readiness; and other interested parties. We will
also make copies available to others upon request. In addition,
the report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web site at
http://www.gao.gov.
If you or your staff have any questions on this report, please
contact me at (202) 512-5559 or stewartd@gao. Contact points for
our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be
found on the last page
of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this
report are listed in appendix IV.
Derek B. Stewart Director, Defense Capabilities and Management
List of Congressional Committees
The Honorable John Warner Chairman The Honorable Carl Levin
Ranking Minority Member Committee on Armed Services United States
Senate
The Honorable Lindsey Graham Chairman The Honorable Ben Nelson
Ranking Minority Member Subcommittee on Personnel Committee on
Armed Services United States Senate
The Honorable Ted Stevens Chairman The Honorable Daniel K. Inouye
Ranking Minority Member Subcommittee on Defense Committee on
Appropriations United States Senate
The Honorable Duncan L. Hunter Chairman The Honorable Ike Skelton
Ranking Minority Member Committee on Armed Services House of
Representatives
The Honorable John M. McHugh Chairman The Honorable Vic Snyder
Ranking Minority Member Subcommittee on Military Personnel
Committee on Armed Services House of Representatives
The Honorable C. W. Bill Young Chairman The Honorable John P.
Murtha Ranking Minority Member Subcommittee on Defense Committee
on Appropriations House of Representatives
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology
Our objectives were to determine (1) what Department of Defense
(DOD) data indicate are the number of reservists mobilized and
deployed in support of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), and the
selected demographic and deployment characteristics of those
deployed and (2) whether DOD's reserve deployment and mobilization
data and analyses are reliable.
We identified, based on congressional interest and our knowledge
of DOD issues, selected demographic and deployment variables to
review. We then worked with the Defense Manpower Data Center
(DMDC) to identify the data fields within DMDC's Contingency
Tracking System (CTS) that best provided information about the
selected demographic and deployment variables we wanted to
analyze. Although we wanted to analyze the locations to which
reservists were deployed and the units with which reservists were
deployed, DMDC officials said, and we agreed based on our review
of the data, that the data were not reliable enough for those
purposes. Our selected variables included
o the number of deployed reservists who volunteered for at least
one deployment;
o the number of deployed reservists who have served one, two, or
three or more deployments;
o the race and ethnicity of the deployed reservists;
o the gender of the deployed reservists;
o the state of residence of the deployed reservists;
o the number of deployed reservists who were Selected Reserve,
Individual Ready Reserve, Standby Reserve, or Retired Reserve;
o the number of deployed reservists who were citizens at the time
of their deployment;
o the number of days the reservists were deployed; and
o the top occupational areas for reservists deployed in support
of GWOT.
To address objective 1, we obtained and analyzed data for
September 2001 through June 2006 from DMDC's CTS. CTS consists of
two files-the activation file, which tracks activations and
mobilizations, and the deployment file, which tracks deployments.
Using CTS data from both files, we analyzed the number of National
Guard and Reserve servicemembers mobilized and deployed in support
of GWOT, as well as selected demographic and deployment variables,
using statistical analysis software.
To address objective 2, we performed a data reliability assessment
on the data provided by DMDC from CTS' activation and deployment
files. We requested DMDC reports that replicated our analyses and
then compared those report results to our analyses, and we
reviewed the programming code DMDC used to generate those reports.
To assess the reliability of CTS data, we obtained an
understanding of the data, the file structure, the sources of the
data, and relevant DOD guidance.1 Specifically, we (1) performed
electronic testing of the data files for completeness (that is,
missing data), out-of-range values, and dates outside of valid
time frames; (2) assessed the relationships among data elements
(for example, determining whether deployment dates were
overlapping since each record in the deployment file is intended
to represent one deployment); (3) reviewed existing information
about the data and the systems that produced them; (4) interviewed
department officials to identify known problems or limitations in
the data, as well as to understand the relationship between the
two files and how data are received from the services, cleaned
("rebaselined"), and processed by DMDC; and (5) compared
"prerebaselined" mobilization data to "postrebaselined"
mobilization data to determine the extent to which the data
changed as a result of the cleaning effort.2 When we found
discrepancies (for example, overlapping deployment dates), we
worked with DMDC to understand the discrepancies.
In our interviews with DMDC officials, we discussed the purpose
and uses of CTS, the service data rebaselining effort and the
internal controls for verifying data analyses, monthly validation
of data, and performing data analyses. Similarly, we discussed
data collection, processing, and reliability issues as well as
service-specific data issues and the rebaselining effort with
officials from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Reserve Affairs and from each of the reserve components,
including the U.S. Army National Guard, the U.S. Air National
Guard, the U.S. Army Reserve, the U.S. Navy Reserve, the U.S.
Marine Corps Reserve, and the U.S. Air Force Reserve. We also
discussed the reliability of the services' data, the rebaselining
effort, and the results of a previous Joint Staff review of the
quality of service data within CTS with officials in the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Manpower and Personnel office. Finally, we
interviewed officials from the Deployment Health Surveillance
Directorate and the Army Medical Surveillance Activity about the
quality of the deployment data and how they use the data.
In the course of our review, we determined that some data fields
were highly unreliable. For example, electronic testing indicated
that data on location and reservist unit information were missing
in many cases. Based on our conversations with DMDC and our
understanding of the data system, we decided not to conduct lower
level analyses (for example, analyses of reservists' assigned
units) because the results would be less reliable than aggregate
level analyses. Although we are reasonably confident in the
reliability of most CTS data fields at the aggregate level,
because we could not compare source documentation from each of the
services to a sample of DMDC data, we could not estimate precise
margins of error. Consequently, we used the data for descriptive
purposes, and we did not base any recommendations on the results
of our analyses. In addition, we presented only higher level,
aggregate data from fields that we determined were sufficiently
reliable for our reporting purposes. For these purposes, and
presented in this way, the CTS data we use are sufficiently
reliable with the following caveat: The Army had not completed its
rebaselining effort for mobilization data before the completion of
our review, and we could not, therefore, assess the reliability of
Army mobilization data to the same extent as those of the other
services. However, based on our electronic testing, data
comparisons, and interviews with officials, we believe that the
data are sufficiently reliable to present as descriptive
information.
To assess the reliability of DMDC's reports (that is, its own
analyses) of CTS data, we compared our independent analyses of
National Guard and Reserve servicemembers' mobilization and
deployment statistics with results that DMDC provided from its own
analyses of the same data. To pinpoint differences in analytical
assumptions, we reviewed the statistical code DMDC used to produce
its reports and compared it with our programming code. Through an
iterative process, we noted errors in DMDC's programs and
requested changes and reruns of the data. We worked with DMDC to
ensure that discrepancies were not caused by differences in our
analytical assumptions. Where there were discrepancies, we reached
the following consensus on how to address them:
o Removed the Coast Guard entries from our analyses of the CTS
database since, as we state in this report, the Coast Guard
Reserve is under the day-to-day control of the Department of
Homeland Security rather than DOD.
o Combined a reservist's Social Security number with his or her
reserve component to create a unique identifier. DMDC officials
said they do this because they are unsure where the source of the
error is when they find that a Social Security number corresponds
with two reserve components for a deployment during approximately
the same time period. DOD's policy,3 when there is a duplicate
Social Security number for more than one reserve component, is to
count both transactions. However, the use of duplicate Social
Security numbers results in overcounting. Specifically, the June
2006 file had 38 reservists with overlapping mobilizations, 20
reservists with overlapping deployments, and more than 800
deployed reservists who appeared to have legitimately changed
components. To compensate for the 58 "errors" where DMDC did not
know which mobilization or deployment to count, it double-counted
all 58 reservists. Likewise, the 800 deployed reservists who
changed reserve components during GWOT were also double-counted.
o Removed reservists from all analyses when their reserve
component category is unknown, so that the numeric totals across
analyses would be consistent. DMDC officials said that this is an
undocumented standard operating procedure.
o Utilized the reservists' information for most recent deployment
to provide the most current information possible in cases where a
reservist deployed more than once.
o Calculated the length of a reservist's deployment by including
both the day the deployment began and the day on which the
deployment ended. Thus, the number of days deployed is inclusive
of the beginning and end dates.
o Combined the race categories for Asian, Native Hawaiian, and
Other Pacific Islander because, prior to 2003, the distinction
between these two groups was not captured in the data.
After clarifying and agreeing on the analytical assumptions, we
again reviewed DMDC's code and compared its results with our own
to determine whether and why there were remaining discrepancies.
We also requested written documentation of DMDC's internal control
procedures for the CTS data and, when no documentation was
available, interviewed knowledgeable officials about existing
internal control procedures. Using the framework of standards for
internal control for the federal government,4 we compared the
information from those documents and interviews with our numerous,
iterative reviews of DMDC's statistical programs used to generate
comparative reports to assess the reliability of DMDC-generated
reports from CTS. We determined that the reports DMDC generated
for our review were not sufficiently reliable for our reporting
purpose. Thus, we completed our own data analyses.
We performed our work from December 2005 through August 2006 in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Appendix II: Data on Reservists Deployed in Support of GWOT through June 30, 2006
Our analysis of DOD data indicates that most reservists who
deployed in support of GWOT through June 30, 2006, were part of
the Selected Reserve (see table 5). In addition, California,
Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida had the highest numbers of
reservists who have deployed in support of GWOT through June 30,
2006 (see table 6).
Table 5: Reserve Component Categories for Reservists Deployed in Support
of the Global War on Terrorism by Fiscal Year through June 30, 2006
2001a 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006b
Army Selected Reservec 3,647 6,920 40,355 47,869 60,172 23,765
National Individual Ready 0 2 17 48 49 50
Guard Reserve/Inactive
National Guardd,
e
Total 3,647 6,922 40,372 47,917 60,221 23,815
Air Selected Reserve 1,522 19,515 22,605 13,479 12,630 9,882
National
Guard Total 1,522 19,515 22,605 13,479 12,630 9,882
Army Selected Reserve 1,172 4,994 35,181 27,915 21,884 11,531
Reserve Individual Ready 9 189 951 1,427 2,853 1,516
Reserve/Inactive
National Guard
Standby/Retired 0 22 113 132 140 133
Reservef, g
Total 1,181 5,205 36,245 29,474 24,877 13,180
Navy Selected Reserve 217 2,506 5,438 5,348 5,110 5,658
Reserve Individual Ready 27 73 212 163 305 177
Reserve/Inactive
National Guard
Standby/Retired 1 1 5 3 2 8
Reserve
Total 245 2,580 5,655 5,514 5,417 5,843
Marine Selected Reserve 8 1,169 9,568 5,593 3,052 864
Corps Individual Ready 0 182 378 262 242 62
Reserve Reserve/Inactive
National Guard
Standby/Retired 0 0 6 4 5 3
Reserve
Total 8 1,351 9,952 5,859 3,299 929
Air Selected Reserve 502 11,592 11,591 8,777 8,157 6,421
Force Individual Ready 6 35 139 137 241 41
Reserve Reserve/Inactive
National Guard
Standby/Retired 0 10 73 22 15 14
Reserve
Total 508 11,637 11,803 8,936 8,413 6,476
Total 7,111 47,210 126,632 111,179 114,857 60,125
Source: GAO analysis of DOD data.
Notes: Title 10 U.S.C. 10145(b) provides that the Army National Guard and
the Air National Guard are to be in the Ready Reserve. Reservists can be
counted more than once if they deployed more than once in different fiscal
years.
aFiscal year 2001 data are for September 11, 2001, through September 30,
2001.
bFiscal year 2006 data are for October 1, 2005, through June 30, 2006.
cThe Selected Reserve, part of the Ready Reserve, is composed of those
units and individuals designated by their respective services and approved
by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as so essential to initial
wartime missions that they have priority for training, equipment, and
personnel over all other reserve elements.
dThe Individual Ready Reserve consists mainly of trained individuals who
have previously served in active component units or in the Selected
Reserve and who have a remaining military service obligation.
eThe Inactive National Guard consists of National Guard personnel who are
attached to a specific unit but are temporarily unable to participate in
regular training. Currently, only the Army National Guard uses this
category.
fThe Standby Reserve consists of personnel who have completed all
obligated or required service or have been removed from the Ready Reserve
because of civilian employment, temporary hardship, or disability.
gThe Retired Reserve consists of personnel who have been placed in a
retirement status based on the completion of 20 or more qualifying years
of active component or reserve component service.
Table 6: State, Territories, and Armed Forces Areas of Residence for
Reservists Deployed in Support of the Global War on Terrorism through June
30, 2006
Residence of Army Air Marine Air
deployed National National Army Navy Corps Force
populationa Guard Guard Reserve Reserve Reserve Reserve Total
Alaska 471 979 147 4 27 42 1,670
Alabama 5,301 1,380 2,484 387 332 596 10,480
Arkansas 3,891 830 1,078 49 139 132 6,119
Arizona 2,005 583 1,208 138 430 697 5,061
California 6,811 1,882 5,910 3,769 3,321 2,811 24,504
Colorado 939 889 1,441 27 223 759 4,278
Connecticut 1,753 627 738 141 206 226 3,691
District of 131 27 174 234 9 36 611
Columbia
Delaware 502 386 252 10 39 438 1,627
Florida 5,232 683 4,478 1,347 929 2,448 15,117
Georgia 5,860 1,543 3,623 407 732 913 13,078
Hawaii 2,058 453 856 137 63 202 3,769
Iowa 3,963 941 1,431 19 153 33 6,540
Idaho 2,004 710 329 11 54 50 3,158
Illinois 4,032 1,910 3,272 103 683 454 10,454
Indiana 4,328 1,188 1,583 60 331 685 8,175
Kansas 2,394 978 1,760 87 100 287 5,606
Kentucky 2,803 628 1,347 33 190 90 5,091
Louisiana 5,877 416 1,271 112 435 613 8,724
Massachusetts 2,965 1,006 1,684 76 357 758 6,846
Maryland 1,839 1,195 2,215 584 432 487 6,752
Maine 1,407 647 417 79 26 22 2,598
Michigan 3,560 1,542 1,824 72 681 403 8,082
Minnesota 4,699 1,209 2,064 46 126 592 8,736
Missouri 4,199 1,032 2,605 110 262 580 8,788
Mississippi 5,647 1,308 1,263 219 126 190 8,753
Montana 1,302 582 472 5 35 25 2,421
North Carolina 6,287 935 2,909 284 697 755 11,867
North Dakota 1,627 167 173 2 4 28 2,001
Nebraska 2,007 687 1,262 16 73 58 4,103
New Hampshire 1,121 417 553 30 54 71 2,246
New Jersey 2,234 1,332 1,506 215 479 839 6,605
New Mexico 978 482 531 52 79 122 2,244
Nevada 612 541 335 73 153 137 1,851
New York 4,571 2,566 4,833 179 1,406 898 14,453
Ohio 4,047 2,552 4,452 125 613 1,402 13,191
Oklahoma 2,951 1,406 1,151 51 135 597 6,291
Oregon 3,112 301 419 49 223 302 4,406
Pennsylvania 6,053 2,368 5,415 269 828 1,322 16,255
Rhode Island 1,092 474 253 109 61 14 2,003
South Carolina 3,760 817 1,767 268 179 996 7,787
South Dakota 1,916 571 246 1 2 23 2,759
Tennessee 5,519 1,612 1,855 103 368 94 9,551
Texas 6,901 1,503 7,271 1,233 1,475 2,421 20,804
Utah 2,697 811 986 10 228 569 5,301
Virginia 3,238 879 3,756 1,759 905 585 11,122
Vermont 1,294 410 135 1 12 13 1,865
Washington 4,320 839 1,808 225 383 1,274 8,849
Wisconsin 4,177 1,291 2,257 39 282 603 8,649
West Virginia 1,975 879 1,137 6 45 75 4,117
Wyoming 694 407 115 4 9 16 1,245
Territories and 4,366 670 3,390 4,701 15 243 13,385
Armed Forces
areas
Unknown or Not 22 703 651 2,345 139 743 4,603
applicable
Total 163,544 51,174 95,092 20,415 19,288 28,769 378,282
Source: GAO analysis of DOD data.
Notes: Territories include the District of Columbia, American Samoa, the
Northern Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Armed
Forces areas include Armed Forces of the Americas, Armed Forces Europe,
and Armed Forces Pacific. This population represents 13,385, or about 4
percent, of the total number of deployed reservists.
aReservists who had more than one deployment are counted by the state of
residence of record for the most current deployment.
38 DOD Instruction 7730.54 and DOD Instruction 6490.03.
39 DOD Instruction 7730.54.
40 DOD Instruction 7730.54.
41 GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
42 During the ongoing monthly validation process, DMDC officials said that
they apply a series of undocumented business rules to identify and address
inconsistencies in the data provided by the services and comparable data
reported in DEERS and by DFAS.
43 GAO, Government Auditing Standards, GAO-03-673G (Washington, D.C.: June
2003).
44 GAO-03-673G, sections 7.12 b, 7.31, and 7.59.
1 DOD Instruction 6490.03, DOD Instruction 1336.5, and DOD Instruction
7730.54.
2 To assess the extent the data changed, we first received and analyzed
data provided by DMDC in a December 2005 file about reservists deployed in
support of GWOT. While DOD's rebaselining effort was still being
completed, we received updated data from DMDC in a June 2006 file about
reservists deployed in support of GWOT through June 2006, which allowed us
to compare prerebaselined December 2005 data with postrebaselined December
2005 data. We compared these two data submissions and analyzed the extent
to which the data had changed during the rebaselining effort.
3 DOD Instruction 7730.54.
4 GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Defense
Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments
GAO Contact
Derek Stewart (202) 512-5559 or [email protected]
Acknowledgments
In addition to the contact named above, Cynthia Jackson, Assistant
Director; Crystal Bernard; Tina Kirschbaum; Marie A. Mak; Ricardo Marquez;
Julie Matta; Lynn Milan; Rebecca Shea; and Cheryl Weissman made key
contributions to this report.
(350682)
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Highlights of GAO-06-1068 , a report to congressional committees
September 2006
MILITARY PERSONNEL
DOD and the Services Need to Take Additional Steps to Improve Mobilization
Data for the Reserve Components
GAO has previously reported on the Department of Defense's (DOD) ability
to track reservists deployed to the theater of operations and made
recommendations. Reliable mobilization and deployment data are critical
for making decisions about reserve force availability and medical
surveillance. Because of broad congressional interest, GAO initiated a
review under the Comptroller General's authority to conduct evaluations on
his own initiative to determine (1) what DOD data indicate are the number
of reservists mobilized and deployed in support of the Global War on
Terrorism (GWOT) and the selected demographic and deployment
characteristics of those deployed and (2) whether DOD's reserve deployment
and mobilization data and analyses are reliable. GAO analyzed data and
data analyses from DOD's Contingency Tracking System (CTS) and interviewed
agency officials.
What GAO Recommends
GAO is recommending that DOD standardize the use of key terms; provide
required data, such as location; and document its internal procedures,
processes, and assumptions for analyzing and verifying data analyses. DOD
generally concurred except for the need for DMDC to document its
assumptions. GAO believes that basic key assumptions should be documented.
GAO's analysis of DOD data indicates that more than 531,000 reservists
have been mobilized in support of GWOT as of June 30, 2006, and more than
378,000 reservists, or 71 percent of the number mobilized, have been
deployed. The number of reservists deployed increased through fiscal year
2003 and remained stable through fiscal year 2005. The majority of
reservists have been deployed once. GAO's analysis further indicates that
of the more than 378,000 reservists who have deployed in support of GWOT,
81 percent have spent a year or less deployed and 17 percent of reservists
have spent more than 1 year but less than 2 years deployed. Of those who
deployed, almost 98 percent were U.S. citizens. Since GWOT began, about 78
percent of reservists who were deployed were White, about 14 percent were
Black or African American, and almost 90 percent identified themselves as
non-Hispanic and 8 percent as Hispanic. Of those who were deployed, 89
percent were male and 11 percent were female. There were three
variables-volunteer status, location deployed, and unit deployed-required
by DOD policy for which the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) could not
provide data because the data either did not exist or were not reliable
enough for the purposes of GAO's report.
GAO found the deployment and mobilization data used to be reliable for
providing descriptive information. However, the mobilization data, some
deployment data fields, and DMDC's processes for data analyses need
improvement. DMDC and the services have recently taken steps to improve
the reliability of mobilization data; however, additional steps are needed
to make mobilization data more reliable. DMDC and the services have
undertaken a large-scale, challenging effort to replace all previous
service-provided mobilization data in DMDC's CTS database with new data
from the services, referred to as "rebaselining." To date, the Air Force
has certified that it has rebaselined its data and Navy officials say they
have validated their personnel files and established a common baseline of
data with DMDC. The Army, which has mobilized the largest number of
reservists, has not completed its rebaselining effort and has not set a
deadline for completion. Also, DOD has not fully addressed other data
issues that could affect the accuracy and completeness of the data, such
as standardizing the use of key terms and ensuring that the services
address data issues identified by DMDC as well as provide data for all
required data fields, such as location, to DMDC. Also, because the data
analyses DMDC provided had numerous errors, GAO questions the
effectiveness of its verification procedures and other supporting
procedures, all of which DMDC has not documented. Until DOD addresses data
issues and DMDC documents the internal control procedures it uses to
analyze data and verify its analyses of the data, the information provided
to decision makers within Congress and DOD may be unreliable and decision
makers will not be in the best position to make informed decisions about
reserve force availability and reservists' exposure to health hazards.
*** End of document. ***