The Army May Have Difficulty Achieving Material Weakness Plan's Completion Date The Army has made some progress by developing a material weakness plan, but it may have difficulty achieving the plan's December 1999 completion date for the following three reasons. First, Army commands are not fully implementing the required 12-step methodology, and the Army has acknowledged that staffing levels for oversight reviews to ensure compliance are insufficient. Second, as of October 1997, critical subplans outlining how the Army intends to meet its milestones had not been developed for the costing system and the computer-based methodology. The Army's progress in implementing the computer-based methodology during its initial pilot test has been slower than the Army has estimated. Last, milestones for critical portions of the plan have slipped from original estimates, even though the plan's overall completion date has remained the same. Delays in implementing the plan's corrective actions could result in further reductions of institutional personnel without the benefits of workload analysis and assessments of risks and tradeoffs. Army Institutional Workforce Requirements Are Not Based on Workload Army regulations require that the institutional workforce be based on workload. However, our February 1997 report concluded that the Army cannot identify and prioritize its institutional workload and therefore does not have an analytical basis for assigning institutional personnel or assurance that it has the minimum workforce for accomplishing institutional missions. The material weakness plan acknowledges this problem, stating that ". . managers at all levels do not have the information needed to improve work performance, improve organizational efficiency, and determine and support staffing needs, manpower budgets, and personnel reductions." The Army's plan contains some logical steps to correct this material weakness, [4] including the Army's two near-term solutions to identifying the number of institutional positions based on an analysis of the workload. These solutions are a computer system for depots and arsenals, called the Army Workload Performance System (AWPS), and the 12-step methodology analysis for major commands. AWPS was developed to integrate workload and workforce information so depot managers can project the workforce needed to accomplish various levels of workload. The 12-step methodology was developed to link personnel to workload, reduce the cost of accomplishing work, and help managers make choices as they balance personnel and workload. The Army plans to integrate the workload and workforce information provided by the 12-step methodology and AWPS with the Civilian Manpower Integrated Costing System. According to Army officials, the Army will not be able to successfully link workload and workforce to the budget without the integration of these three elements. [5] For this reason, our review primarily focused on these initiatives. Commands Are Not Fully Implementing the 12-Step Method Although the Army established the 12-step methodology in April 1996 as the standard process for determining institutional requirements, commands' requirements programs fall short of what the Army expects. (See app. H for a fist of Army major commands.) The 12-step method includes analyses of missions and functions, opportunities to improve processes, workload drivers, workforce options (including civilian versus military and contracting versus in-house), and organizational structure. Figure I shows the components of the 12-step method. Even though Army commands will continue to have some flexibility in creating their own requirements program, they will be required to perform all of the analyses included in the 12-step method. According to draft Army Regulation 570-4, although specific processes for determining requirements can vary, all processes must be approved by Army headquarters and have a common conceptual framework that consists of the 12-step analyses. Figure 1: 12-Step Methodology Step 12 - Document the results Step 11 - Resolve issues Step 10 - Structure new organization Step 9 - Describe staffing offsets Step 8 - Compute demand for labor Step 7 - Discuss issues and assumptions Step 6 - Develop staffing model Step 5 - Define, validate, and project workload Step 4 - Analyze sources of labor Step 3 - Evaluate functions Step 2 - Validate mission Step 1 - Create resource baseline Currently, the Army has no formal review process for determining whether major commands are using the 12-step methodology. Our review of requirements programs at three major commands (Army Materiel Command, Training and Doctrine Command, and Forces Command) found that the programs differ substantially in coverage and content and do not include all of the 12-step analyses. The Army Materiel Command's review did not systematically analyze labor sources (steps 4 and 9), such as examining the potential for contracting out various functions. Also, the Command did not perform efficiency reviews (step 3) because it assumed that the organization had already become efficient as a result of downsizing. Further, the Command did not consider customer satisfaction (step 7) as an element of timeliness and quality of services or examine best practice approaches (step 3). [6] Even though these steps were not performed, the Command reported that it had validated 79,941 personnel of its 80,542 assigned end strength-more than 99 percent. The Training and Doctrine Command's process examines similar functions across installations to look for best practices and analyzes whether a particular installation is structured efficiently. However, the process does not include a decrement list (step 7), which contains options of how a command may perform its mission by merging, eliminating, or transferring functions if it receives fewer positions than expected. The Forces Command's process examines functions at each installation. When this examination is completed, Command officials stated that they would compare functions across installations. As of November 1997, the Command had completed reviews at 3 of 11 installations and had not compared similar functions across the installations to perform the best practice analyses required in step 3. According to Command officials, Forces Command plans to examine best practices at the conclusion of its individual installation reviews in September 1998. Insufficient Staff Could Delay Required Reviews of 12-Step Approach and Limit Army's Management Oversight The material weakness plan establishes procedures for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs to review commands' requirements programs to ensure that they include the 12-step analyses. The Army's plan to review commands' compliance with the 12-step method may be delayed if Manpower and Reserve Affairs does not receive sufficient staff to conduct oversight reviews. According to a Manpower and Reserve Affairs official, the office is to (1) certify commands' requirements programs and their compliance with the 12 steps, (2) conduct quality assurance reviews of commands' requirements studies, and (3) assist major commands by conducting 12-step reviews on a contract basis. According to the plan, certification reviews are scheduled to start in March 1998, and quality assurance reviews are scheduled to begin in June 1998. To successfully accomplish these tasks within the plan's time frames, a Manpower and Reserve Affairs official estimated that at least 35 additional staff would be needed. However, the material weakness plan states that only nine staff would be hired. The Assistant Secretary stated that executing the plan would require more resources. The lack of staff could delay both the certification and quality assurance reviews and prevent the Army from realizing the full benefits of this approach. Staff from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs cited their review of air traffic control operations as an example of how the Army expects to benefit from proper application of the 12-step methodology. At the beginning of the study, these institutional positions totaled 2,238 at multiple locations. The study used the 12-step method to develop a workforce model and recommended centralizing all tactical personnel in a single battalion stationed at the Army's Aviation School at Fort Rucker, Alabama. The study concluded that this consolidation could save 226 military positions, which the Army could transfer to meet other requirements, and $5.5 million annually in stationing and operating costs. Footnotes [4] The plan's corrective actions include linking the civilian workforce to the budget; updating the Army's personnel regulation to establish a new workload-based methodology as the Army standard (draft Army Regulation 570-4); certifying major commands' requirements processes; performing quality assurance reviews of commands' requirements determination studies; and implementing a new computer system at Army depots, arsenals, and ammunition plants. [5] In the long term, the Army would like to integrate its institutional forces into its requirements process for operational forces, known as Total Army Analysis. Our February 1997 report discusses the Total Army Analysis process. [6] Efficiency reviews and best practice approaches are designed to improve processes and structure efficient organizations for accomplishing missions. Back to Table of Contents Force Structure US Army Back to GAO List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by US GAO. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com